Throwback Thursday, vocab edition

Last August, I had taken to a spot at a local university's library.  My quiet corner was a place where even the list of chores I kept in my head had to shush as I read and sometimes wrote for awhile each week.   After the fall semester began, I discovered several tables had been set up near my spot.  A used book sale was underway, each book only one dollar. 

I’m a sucker for a bargain, but I have no room at home for more books.  I’m a wannabe book worm with shelves of the things still needing to be read.  Yet, whenever my concentration wandered from the book I’d brought from home, there the sale tables lay in wait for me.  Did I get up and find another spot to avoid temptation?  No.  I am stubborn.  I was not going to buy a book.   

So I just looked.  Once, to stretch my legs, I trailed up and down the aisles closest to my spot, my neck bowed and cricked as I read the titles.  Fortunately, many there were the library's copies of outdated textbooks or about computer languages deader than Latin and with no hope of being as interesting.  The tables stayed up for weeks, and I found I could ignore them pretty well, eventually.  Because I wasn't going to take any of them home.

Then came the day I wandered too far.  In my defense, I believe my spot was occupied when I arrived at the library, so I went hunting for another one.  I happened to wander by the end of a book sale table I hadn't bothered with before.  More textbooks, more tired reference works, I'd assumed.

Two colossal volumes caught my attention.  Three words on both spines stopped my heart.  And feet.

...Oxford English Dictionary

THE Oxford English Dictionary?  No.  Not here.  No one would sell those.  Well, maybe two of them, if that's all there was...

THE COMPACT EDITION OF THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY

What.  You mean...that is to say, you mean, the version where all the umpteen volumes are in just two books?  The one that wouldn't occupy miles of shelf space in any given home, like mine?  That one?  THAT ONE?!?!

Oh yes.  That one.

Oh my ever-loving God.

Seriously, folks, I actually looked up to see if anyone else was about to swoop in for this prize.  Had no one else seen these here all this time?  I touched one, lifted it, set it on the backs of WordPerfect manuals (or whatever was underneath it, as if I was paying attention), and I opened it.

Understandably, you may not get why I love this dictionary.  I’ll explain.  This compendium is the chronicle of the soul of the English language.  I pored over its pages in college as if reading the secret diaries of my mother tongue.  The OED is not just a book of definitions.  It reveals the definitions' ancestry and the first known use of words in writing.  The dictionary deepens literature and breaks some of its codes.  It's only a little bit of a stretch to say that all the thousands of dollars spent on my higher education was worth it, just to be introduced to these books.

And now every single word in them could be mine for two dollars. Total.

You're damn straight I took those books home, schlepping them to the other side of the campus--I'm telling you, the English Language weighs a ton in late summer--where my car was waiting.  I found room for them on our shelves.  It was only two books, after all.  And I've lived happily with them ever since. 

Says she, like this was a proper fairy tale.  No, I didn’t match soul-destroying obstacles with overcoming heroism; I pounced on a pearl worthy of a greater price, and I’m not sorry.  I’m sharing my geeky confession with you to help you understand why I want to present rusty ol’ words from the OED, and why I’d rather do this on Throwback Thursdays than toss grimace-inducing photos from the late twentieth century onto my Facebook feed.  If I share more OED words, they won’t come with lengthy explanations like now.  Really.

So, with the help of a powerful magnifying glass and a bit of paraphrasing to unpack the dictionary’s abbreviations, today’s TBT Vocab Word from the good people at Oxford:

Repai'ring -- (a noun derived from a verb, rare.)  The act of going or resorting (to a place); (obsolete) return; (obsolete) place of repair or resort.

Earliest recorded use in 1375 by John Barbour in The Bruce:  "Heir I saw the men..mak luging [making camp].  Heir trow [true] I be their repayring.

Page 2493 of the Compact OED

I now own such a treasure because of my repairing to a library. 

Milestone Illuminated

Very soon, my eyes will have been in use for four decades. When I was seven, my sight swirled down the pipes in a hurry, and I was fitted with bifocals which I wore until junior high. Then I got "regular" glasses.

As of last year, I'm back in the bifocals…sans the classic, annoying lines bisecting my world, thankyouverymuch. My vision had gotten to the point where I couldn't look from far to near--to read, type, sew, knit, etc.--without feeling like my eyes were trying to adjust by screwing themselves deeper into my head.

Now, have I ever mentioned here how dark my house can be? I'm sure I have. It's a pet peeve of mine and I'm not likely to keep a peeve hidden under a bushel. No.

And surprisingly enough, bifocals don't increase light, no sir, no how. They just make the shadows sharper.  My middle-aged eyes were griping at me to speak some light into the darkness, or else. So like a good, modern consumer, I bought a lamp.



The neck of the lamp has a pretty medallion to make aging appear graceful…



And it slides up and down for height adjustment…





…The mirror in the hall caught me taking pics of the lamp. And here's the whole shebang.



I've installed an incandescent bulb in the lamp for now because I like the warm light. One day, when I'm yet another year or two older and incandescents have gone the way of rotary phones, I'll probably cave into societal realities by buying a CFL bulb. CFLs emit an ugly light, though, and I don't like them. Really, I'd like to, but I don't. Maybe I can save up for an LED bulb instead. According to what I've heard about those, one bulb may last me a couple decades. By then, I'll probably be thinking more about replacements for knees than light bulbs.

In the meantime, I can knit, quilt, and read without a headache stalking me.  Happy birthday to me.

Knitting swap loot and a view from the soapbox

Recently I participated in a knitting swap based on the upcoming Eclipse movie. It's theme? Team Edward vs. Team Jacob. Since I know how the story ends, I sided with the romantic winner, the very Mr. Cullen. This is what my swap partner sent me.



My partner is Martha of Green Mountain Knitting Bags fame. I've yearned for one of her bags nigh on...ever since I've seen them many moons ago. Now I have one. In blue. And I now have blue Ella Rae Lace Merino. And blue curly wool to make more thrummed mitts whenever I feel like it. Sense a favorite color theme? The necklace in the photo, by Jenifer Smith, is supposed to be a choker made to look like a bite mark. Alas, my neck's girth makes this subtle bit ot bling into a better bracelet, so that's how I've been wearing it.

In exchange, I sent Martha a shawl in wolfish colors, since she is on Jacob's side.



It's the Multnomah Shawl pattern, and the yarn is off a cone--one of two cones--from Spun Fibers Inc. Rocky Road is the yarn name, and London Town is the colorway. I have over 15,000 yards of this yarn. Yeah.



See? Lots and lots of it to be had.



The shawl pin came from The Shawl Pin Store, thank you very much Google. The mother of pearl circle, cut off-center, is reminiscent to me of an eclipse. So, cute, huh? See what I did there?

I also did these stitch markers to play on the theme.



You might not believe it from seeing these pictures, but I'm not hyperventilating to see the Eclipse movie. I'm fond of the "saga" and all, but I can definately wait until the fervor dies down to see the flick. I'm thinking that part of the reason for my indifference, after noticing all the Twilight merchandising that's been peddled in the last couple years, is based on burnout. I mean, people...werewolf pack tattoo PACKING TAPE? What? Did Bella use this stuff when she was moving out of Charlie's house?

I'll nip this rant in the bud right here. Suffice it to say, I like the story but can do without the peripheral drama the movie has stirred up. I will add, however, that I love the handmade stuff based on the books. I'm DIY biased, of course. Buying it by hand may be faster, but making it by hand is usually more entertaining...and proof via hard work that one is sincerely nuts about something.

Linked up to:
--  Just Something I Whipped Up Mondays

Project 365, Week 7

February 15



House Frog
This three-legged, black-dotted, blue frog showed up as trash in our yard several years ago. Up until three years ago it lived on an outside window sill next to the driveway because I just didn't want to throw it away. Unclaimed, it now resides in a glass dish in the house. The books are classics I inherited from my mother. Her dog Boots tore into a few of them.


February 16

 

What Now
Because I'm equal opportunity, here's a photo of the other cat, Rosie, to balance out the photo of Harry last week. This was almost the last one of several I took. She was a bit exasperated with her live-in paparazza.


February 17



Ash Wednesday


February 18

 

Shawl Pin


February 19

 

To Go
This week we have a lamp from Il Vicino restaurant.


February 20

 

Giant Slalom-ghan Progress
This is a blanket I'm knitting for my husband's stepdad.  I'm using the Olympics' Closing Ceremonies as my deadline, and my inspiration for doing so has been the Ravelry.com Winter Ravelympics.  The pattern is the very simple Ten Stitch Blanket by Frankie Brown.

Fire on the Waves

Remember this blanket from last September?



Since you've probably slept since then, you may not. It was based on the water rescue scene in Stephenie Meyer's bookNew Moon, the second book of the Twilight series. Bella Swan had previously taken a header off a cliff just to hear the disembodied voice of her beloved Edward, and Jacob Black--a teen werewolf and Bella's long-suffering friend with a whole muzzle full of unrequited love for our heroine--had just rescued her. For a brief and horrible moment, Bella realizes later that she glimpsed on the waves the firey red hair of her most recent vampiric nemisis, Victoria.

There. That's the background for the inspiration of the blanket. The purpose of the blanket was to be included in a book of Twilight-based knitting patterns. Alas, it's inclusion ain't gonna happen, and neither is book. (Yes, the socks from the last post was meant for this book, too.) So now I get to publish the pattern myself.

Gotta love the ease of vanity publishing.

Here is the .pdf download for Fire on the Waves. It's also listed in the blog's margin under Needle Knitting How To's. If you're on Ravelry, the pattern page with its download is here.

A few specs for the blanket:

Finished Measurements
Approx. 46” x 58”, unblocked

Yarn
Bernat Satin, 100% acrylic, 163 yds (149m) per 100g,
19 skeins of #04111, Denim Mist Heather
(The yarn is held double-stranded. It can be substituted with about 1890 yds of a bulky weight yarn.)

Tools
40” US 11 (8mm) circular needle
Cable Needle
Stitch Markers
Tapestry Needle

Gauge
12 sts/16 rows = 4” stockinette stitch

The pattern has been through the needles of a few test knitters. If you find a problem with it, however, please let me know.

How'd we do and what's ahead

In the interest of fair and objective reporting, here is the 2008 Resolutions list I published last January and how I did on them:


1. Settle on a blogland term of endearment for my husband. (DONE. THOMY: the husband of my youth. I've called him this for years already in cards and notes, even when I could still claim to be youthful.)

2. Knit THOMY a sweater. (DONE)

3. Quilt Lumberjack Butterflies. (NOT EVEN...but I did finish another quilting UFO.)

4. Dad's house: Finish renovations and place it on the market. (DONE and DONE.)

5. At every meal, except on Fridays, have more vegetables/fruit than meat and carbs on the plate. Why not Fridays, too? Cuz. (EVERY DAY TURNED OUT TO BE A FRIDAY...Well, most days anyhow.)

6. And, for crying out loud, finish reading at least 4 books that I've already begun, one per season. (This one is tricky because I can't remember when I began reading a few of the books I completed this year. I read ten books, mostly fiction. Mostly to do with romance...mostly romance for the vampiric, time-traveling, extra terrestrial, or the angelic set. lol. But I did squeeze in a book of poetry and a spin off, historical thriller about a Dickens literary character, Tiny Tim.)

7. Place one handmade thing for sale each month on etsy. (I decided to do a lump make-and-sell during the fall. At least twelve items were added to the shop. And a few even sold!)

8. Make and send my Pay-It-Forward gifts. (DONE)

9. Walk or ride bike each week day, unless I'm sick. (I guess I was sick A LOT. No. I was just on my tush making a kajillion things.)


So, six and half accomplishments out of nine...not so bad.

This year, I'm making only one resolution: For every two yards of yarn I use up from my stash, I am allowed to buy one yard in replacement.

That's it. That's the resolution. Some terminology definitions might be in order, though.

• What do I mean by "stash"? The whole sum of yarn I have acquired and NOT USED IN A COMPLETED PROJECT by December 31, 2008. This includes thrift store sweaters I have yet to unravel and recycle. This also includes yarn that has been knitted in a project that isn't done yet.


• What do I mean by "use up"? That I knit or crochet it, ideally, into a completed project. But selling, giving, or trading it away count, too. (Trading yardage for something other than someone else's yardage, of course, unless that someone else's yardage is half the yardage of my yardage. Capiche?)


• And, "buy"? You know. With money. Or conch shells.

I'm tracking the yardage through the Stash feature in Ravelry. Yay, Ravelry!

And now, for other things I'd like to accomplish this year but will not promise anyone anything:

1. My first vegetable garden. I hate summer. I hate, despise, loathe, recoil from, and otherwise detest heat. Wet heat, especially. I sunburn in April on a cloudy day, for land sakes. My very atoms can't stand anything approaching summer. But...I love home-grown tomatoes. I love them more than I hate summer. So, we're going to try to grow some 'maters this year. Any suggestions for good varieties to grow in containers?

2. Work up to 10,000 steps a day by the end of April.

That should keep me busy, I think.

Embarrassing Split Ends

Let me take a moment to be contemplative--and perhaps exasperated--here. There aren't any pictures accompanying the following words; so, if blocks of type cross your eyes...by all means, don't throw off my sitemeter's mojo by staying longer than five seconds. We'll understand.

A famous author of sparkling hardbodies fame has described herself as a storyteller, not a writer. There are those on various discussion boards about said bedazzling superhumans who agree. They compare her style to high-end fan fiction, implying that her work is of an amateur who got lucky. Now that her latest book has been released, some disappointed readers might imprison her work among the unvisited web pages of mediocre or are-you-trying-to-use-English-as-a-first-language fan fiction. My opinion on that matter isn't the topic right now. What the word writer means, is.

Cuz, I'm not sorry to break it to these critics (even to The Author herself), but a book's words don't just apparate onto the page. They get written there. And, the last time I dropped in on Webster, Oxford, and dictionary.com, the person who writes words on a page--a real or virtual page--is called...wait for it...

Uh, huh. You see where I'm going.

There are different kinds or writers, of course: journalistic, humor, screenplay, playwright for stage, avant-garde, letter (a dying art, probably), anecdotal, analytical, gossip, technical, biographical, and fiction of all genres, among others I'm overlooking.

And there is a spectrum of quality for writers, from those who burn out readers' eyes with literary toxic waste to those who burn through bone and marrow via a finely-fired turn of phrase again and again.

I would like to assure everyone, here and now, that the English language has already made accommodations for our need to categorize and assess; it is okay to use adjectives. Not all adjectives at all times are dead weight. It's okay to say that someone is a "good story writer" if he or she does not also delve into the human psyche by means of haunting metaphor or resonating pearls of wisdom. And, guess what? If you've written something that hasn't been published yet or that may never be picked up by anyone other than yourself, you're still a WRITER. Yes! Glory be! The word "writer" is not a bejeweled tiara. It's a working-class designation for people who take the time to add to the variety we humans all seem to crave.

So what if there are appalling writers and timeless writers, story writers and "Literary" writers? They all get to be called writers. It is really as simple as that. No, really. It is. Honest.

Mark Twain was a storyteller, by the way. He drew in crowds when he spoke, but his fan base was populated mostly by readers...of his writing.

And that's not such bad company to keep, now is it, Ms. Meyer?

Unfelted Unpainted and Unread

It was bigger than a hockey jersey, I swear. And it kinda looked like one, too.

My French Market Bag, unfelted:

Measuring in at 12” wide, 12” deep, and 15” tall for just the bag body, not including the height of the handles, it was a sizable wad of wool. And then I felted it.

Now it’s just a little bigger than a plastic grocery bag. I’m all set for those French Markets. Which means I’m probably over-prepared for my local Kansan Markets. I could probably haul two or three cantaloupes in this hefty tote, no prob, if I was a big cantaloupe fan. But I’m not that wild about them.

By the way, to give the picture a little perspective (and because I don’t have any local produce yet), I filled the bag with yarn—three skeins across and four layers deep of Lion Brand Wool Ease I found at Michael’s for $2/skein. I couldn’t believe I’d run across a Clearance bin that hadn’t been cleared out yet. So I volunteered. This red “sprinkle” yarn is slated for a Susie Hoodie someday in the near future, I hope.

In the meantime, I’m knitting with Cotlin in my first lace project, a Lightning Lace Jacket to wear over tank tops. Yes! Summer knitting.

---------------

Painting update: Only the kitchen, a spare bedroom, and the window in the bathroom remain unpainted in my dad’s house. Glory be. And we still have to sort through the rest of the junk/neat stuff. Oh, but we’re ever so much closer.

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I am a LibraryThing member. The basic membership is free and I have cataloged in my free account all the books I have read that I still own. I have many, many, many…many more books that I haven’t cataloged and won’t until I have read them and have decided to keep them.

Other LT members catalog all the books in their possession, whether or not they have read them. And in LibraryThing’s vast database is a list of the most unread books cataloged by members. Based on this list, a blog meme is going around that asks each blogger to own up to which of these tomes, out of the top 106, he or she has read, begun to read, had to read for school, and read again just for fun.

I took the most updated list of unread books, as of yesterday night, and pasted it below. I’ve highlighted in bold the books I’ve read, underlined the books I read for school, italicized the titles of stories I’ve started but not finished, placed an asterisk (*) beside the ones I would read again, and placed an arrow (>) next to the ones I haven’t read but do own and want to read.

This meme isn’t viral in the sense that I’m going to name five other bloggers whom I want to embarrass into elitist illiteracy. If you want to boast about the books you have or haven’t read, I’ll leave that up to you. If you’d like to crow about which lofty works you’ve chosen to stop a door, prop open windows, or kill spiders, well, by all means…

Here, then, is my confession.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

One hundred years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Crime and punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Catch-22 a novel by Joseph Heller

The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien

Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The Odyssey by Homer

The brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Ulysses by James Joyce

War and peace by Leo Tolstoy

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

A tale of two cities by Charles Dickens

* Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

The name of the rose by Umberto Eco (saw the movie)

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Emma by Jane Austen (saw the movie)

The Iliad by Homer

Vanity fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Pride and prejudice by Jane Austen (saw movie versions, too)

> The historian : a novel by Elizabeth Kostova

The Canterbury tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

The kite runner by Khaled Hosseini

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Life of Pi : a novel by Yann Martel

> The time traveler's wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies by Jared Diamond

Atlas shrugged by Ayn Rand

Foucault's pendulum by Umberto Eco

Dracula by Bram Stoker

The grapes of wrath by John Steinbeck

Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

A heartbreaking work of staggering genius by Dave Eggers

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Sense and sensibility by Jane Austen

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books by Azar Nafisi

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (ooo, loved the most recent movie)

The sound and the fury by William Faulkner

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle I) by Neal Stephenson

American gods : a novel by Neil Gaiman

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

The poisonwood Bible : a novel by Barbara Kingsolver

> Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West… by Gregory Maguire

The picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (nothing but the Cliffe's Notes)

Dune by Frank Herbert

A portrait of the artist as a young man by James Joyce

The satanic verses by Salman Rushdie

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Gulliver's travels by Jonathan Swift

The three musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (saw a handful of movies)

The inferno by Dante Alighieri

The corrections by Jonathan Franzen

The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay : a novel by Michael Chabon

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (saw the public TV movie)

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

To the lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

A clockwork orange by Anthony Burgess

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Persuasion by Jane Austen

The scarlet letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

One flew over the cuckoo's nest by Ken Kesey

The once and future king by T. H. White

Anansi boys : a novel by Neil Gaiman

Atonement: A Novel by Ian McEwan

The god of small things by Arundhati Roy

A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Dubliners by James Joyce

Oryx and Crake : a novel by Margaret Atwood Angela's ashes : a memoir by Frank McCourt

Beloved : a novel by Toni Morrison

Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed by Jared Diamond

The hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo

In cold blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its… by Truman Capote

Lady Chatterley's lover by D.H. Lawrence

A confederacy of dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Les misérables by Victor Hugo

The amber spyglass by Philip Pullman

The prince by Niccolo Machiavelli

Watership Down by Richard Adams

Beowulf : a new verse translation by Anonymous (three or four times, but not cuz I love it!)

The Aeneid by Virgil

A farewell to arms by Ernest Hemingway

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance : an inquiry into… by Robert M. Pirsig

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

The personal history of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Sons and lovers by D.H. Lawrence

Possession : a romance by A.S. Byatt

The book thief by Markus Zusak

The history of Tom Jones, a foundling by Henry Fielding

The road by Cormac McCarthy

Tender is the night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

Gravity's rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

Never let me go by Kazuo Ishiguro

The plague by Albert Camus

Candide, or, Optimism by Voltaire

Jude the obscure by Thomas Hardy

The English patient by Michael Ondaatje

Black Magic and Imperial Affliction

Two of my closest friends helped me celebrate my belated birthday yesterday. We used to get together every week to gab, but now it's more like once a month or every six weeks. Ah, well. Busy, busy people, I guess. Yesterday, however, we kicked back, made the moistest chocolate cake EVER (thanks to Alicia at Mayfly for making the Black Magic cake for her three-year-old and blogging about it). We watched a decently sentimental movie and coated our hands in wax. Before the wax (duh), I knitted instead of partaking in popcorn. I'm up to Cobblestone's armpits in blue wool now.


The photo that made it to the blog, Lisa.

________________________________________

I've posted more to my etsy shop. Two little needle cases and two quilt basting spoons. Huh?

I often pin baste, and a notched basting spoon comes in handy. But I took really cruddy pics, unstuitable at least for etsy's preview thumbnails. Here's a better preview:


________________________________________

Like the blogging groundhog I am, I've been keeping my virtual self underground. So I missed the Third Annual (Silent) Poetry Reading in honor of the Feast of St. Brigid/Groundhog Day. I came up from my hole long enough to see the long shadow of others' poetry selections drop into my blog subscriptions.

Well, I've usually got some sort of poem or literary quote going on in the Poets' Corner, in the right hand column of this blog, so there's always a poetry reading going on in this happenin' spot. But to play "me too," I will feature one here that showed up in the Poets' Corner several months back. It is apropo to Groundhog Day, and winter light, and how I've been feeling as I approach the first anniversary of a death.

There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,
'Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, 't is like the distance
On the look of death.

--Emily Dickinson

A funny thing happened last week on the way to the bank…

Early last week I racked up a whole new list of First Times for myself. For the first time since high school I was in a car accident, but it was my first car accident in which the air bags have deployed. It was the first time EVER I have been knocked unconscious. (I was out only for a moment, fortunately, but waking up from it was like slogging through a swampy, muddy nightmare. The last thing I remembered before the accident was I was supposed to be driving, not sitting behind the wheel with my eyes closed! I distinctly remember yelling myself to consciousness--not out of pain, thankfully, just panic.)

Next was my first ride in an ambulance. Before we left, the woman who had hit me was already receiving care in the ambulance. She was crying and apologizing and holding a little baby who seemed not bothered at all by what was going on. Later I was told by the police officer that this woman had just moved from Coffeyville, Kansas. You might have heard about Coffeyville's troubles earlier this year with widespread flooding that was compounded by an oil leak from the local refinery. I don't know if she had left Coffeyville because she had lost everything; but if she had, she was having one stinker of a year.

She refused further treatment, so I went to the hospital alone in the ambulance. In the hospital I experienced my first CT scan and then an X-ray taken by a machine that came to me in my ER room. Afterwards, upon determining that most of my injuries were scrapes and bruises, I discovered my final first of the day: I have a broken wrist, and it's in my dominant hand, the right one, probably because it was poised just above the steering wheel as I was fixing to turn left before the airbag blew.

Before now, I've never had a broken bone in my life. Now I have two. And even though it's my writing hand, I was ambidextrous before I entered Kindergarten, so I can still write with my other hand like a five-year-old. That seems to be good enough for most people since signatures aren't generally scrutinized anymore for consistency. As far as knitting, quilting, and typing goes… I can knit, slowly and with many breaks. I'm composing this entry right now with speech recognition software, which is more or less hands free and another nifty computer doohickey I get to play with. But I am not quilting at all.

Our mantra right now is "It could've been much worse". I've not made it to the bank yet, but (and as completely moral-of-the-story as this sounds) I'm so glad I made it home.

___________________________

In other news, Mr. B and I went to listen to Stephanie Pearl-McPhee this afternoon. I am a newbie knitter and a blogger with only three months more experience than knitting. I had heard of the Yarn Harlot, but I hadn't really gotten into her blog or other writings until I picked up her book Knitting Rules!: The Yarn Harlot's Bag of Knitting Tricks. (It's got some pretty good instructions on how to knit socks; that's why I wanted it.)
She as a list maker, and I am a list reader. I read lists out loud (the funny ones), and my husband listens to them. He is not a knitter, but he was laughing out loud at her lists. And so he came with me today.

During the presentation, Stephanie demonstrated her Irish Cottage style of knitting, but I was sitting too far away from the stage to record it. My crappy still shot of her is evidence enough of that. Much to my delight, however, someone else has gotten up close and personal to her to capture it on video.

I won't be attempting this way of knitting any time soon. I'm simply looking forward to getting my short cast put on in a few days.

The Apology

I'm sorry. Somebody left the barn door open and let out all the words Wednesday. I guess I was making up for all the silence from the week before.

But because I can't get enough of all the whizbang (and free) stuff going on throughout the internet, I've made a contribution to the LibriVox.org project. It's just a small one, and it's one I can't even mention on the librivox forum because there's a hangup with my registration activation.

I was allowed to upload my first attempt at recording LITERATURE, though. If you'd like to listen to it, follow this link to the .mp3 file. You shall hear Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem The Apology.

Here is the text to the poem: http://www.bartleby.com/42/764.html

Not so...

Let a ransom note be generated for you, or anything else you'd like to spell in alphabet photos from Flickr. It's cleaner than playing with your soup. I heard about this nifty internet do-dad from How About Orange, one of my favorite sources of nifty internet do-dads.

The other sleeve of the kimono jacket is done. Not sure I'm liking either one, but I'm NOT frogging them. When I modeled the sweater in front of the mirror, I spread out my arms to gauge my work and immediately felt like Morticia Adams. Methinks I should not have picked up so many stitches in the arm holes. Too much drape and drama. So, I'm also thinking about calling this project the Reading Kimono and maybe just wearing it at home... Because, by jinx, I'm going to wear the gosh darn thing somewhere.

So I've moved from the sleeves and on to the placket. It's going quickly enough to feel like progress, and it's a little more interesting to photograph.

Speaking of photography, I can't get over how dark my house is. Very little natural light gets into any of it, so I'm afraid a great deal of my pictures are going to turn out cruddy. (I know, I know. Such strong language today. Let's blame the lack of chocolate around here, shall we?) For great domestication photos, I go here. The blog is by a New Zealander--or new Zealandite? But not "Kiwi", though, right, cuz isn't that perjorative? Or at least a name only NZ countrymen can call each other?...it sounds so rude to call someone after a hairy fruit. Anyway, she's got a flair for cottage style and, apparently, an abundance of sunlight, even though it's late winter there now.

If a citizen of New Zealand sees this, please correct my vocabulary. I'm so not wordly. ...Other than having this computer. And an old Palm pilot...your standard cell phone and an electronic dictionary/thesaurus. (Which is VERY cool.) And I play with internet do-dads. I'm a psuedo-technogeek, I guess, but not worldly.

So one more of those techno-dohickies today: I'm placing my reading library on LibraryThing.com. Feel free to check it out. Yes, believe it or not, I read. I'm even knitting a kimono in dedication to it. Granted, I read kinda slowly and with a [battery-operated] dictionary at my side (imagine Born Yesterday's Billie Dawn, only I'm the complete opposite of Melanie Griffith in the looks dept. and I've never been to D.C.). On good days, when the sky is clear despite a low pressure system that's threatening to suck in rain from points southwest and so my stereo picks up radio stations from Oklahoma as if a kid is shouting through a tin can telephone, I can even understand Shakespeare.

That's when my house gets the darkest. Because the rain is coming. It's the rain, gang, not my freak comprehension of four hundred year old English high drama. Or maybe it's just that I read that stuff about the time the weather is changing and I don't bother turning on a light as the house sinks into darkness, all because I'm so absorbed in the aforementioned high drama. I just love all that forsoothing, you know. Takes me to the dictionary every time.

Pucci Mama Afghan

Because I'm not drowning in projects yet , I've joined the Lizard Ridge Afghan club at my local yarn shop. I picked up two skeins of Noro Kureyon, colorway 209, cuz they looked as appealing as a bowlful of Skittles. But like Skittles, the look of the yarn was more appealing to me than the intimate acquaintance. Nevertheless I plowed through the two skeins and produced three blocks for my afghan, which DH promptly called Poochy Mama blocks. But I'll call them Pucci Mama. That name looks more chic, don't you think? Don't answer that.

What helped in this monotony of short-rowing was listening to the last Harry Potter book. I was the 25th person on the waiting list at the library, and my number came up last week. Woohoo! Little else got done around here this weekend as both DH and I were glued to the stereo. My poor, dear Severus...(sigh). I was right on the money about him. I was hoping he'd get to do something more redeeming than what JKR gave him, but at least we got to understand him better. I'm looking forward to seeing Alan Rickman do his thing with this character in the movies for books six and seven.

My general opinion about this last book? It was...exhausting. Almost tedious in places because there was so much backstory to cover about several people and because it seemed Harry & Co. kept getting into the same pattern of scrape again and again and then having the same arguments over and over. But it was all worth it. The best parts came in the last half-dozen or so chapters. I'd buy the book just to keep re-reading some of those passages.

Proof

1. That there is still room in my brain for more know-how. I went to the entrelac scarf class last night and came home with two coompleted rows:



2. That in one weekend I can drive over 800 miles by myself to St. Louis and back (in a rented SUV, no less...SUV!! What a monster), stand in a crowded, stuffy book store with hundreds of edward/jacob/jasper/bella-loving teens without regressing (too much), all the while eagerly awaiting Stephenie Meyer's appearance so I can then stand in line and be about the 200th person to receive an autograph that day (kazillionth that week, no doubt...bless her heart; she's probably got carpal tunnel by now). DEEP BREATH...exhale. The whole experience was a little weird. A little frighening; I guess I've become more of a loner in my 30s because all those bodies felt a little claustrophic to me. On the other hand, I was never one without friends in high school, so I did acutely miss someone to talk to while standing around in the midst of all that sprawling youth and home-decorated t-shirts. My favorite T: "Real men sparkle." In the end, it was a great opportunity to people watch.

Please excuse the blurry picture of Stephenie Meyer. In the screen on my camera, it didn't look so bad.

Although I'm going on and on like a groupie about this little quest, one thing I've learned about quests is that their purpose is rarely about the stated goal. The Meyer signing was a great excuse to get out of town for 48 hours, to stay away from the phone, email, tv, and other technological what-have-you...and whiny cats. Not that I'm in great demand during my everyday life--ha!...except for the cats, of course--sometimes they're worse than a beeping smoke detector. Anyway, not long after Dad's funeral this winter, I broadly hinted at myself that I was going to use one of Stephenie Meyer's appearance dates as a means to retreat for a bit. I've never gone to great lengths to listen to an author before, but Stephenie seems down to earth, and I can relate to her sense of humor. We're about the same age...so she's not real intimidating to me. Plus, she's smart and creative, so I knew I'd like listening to her.

Yet I spent more time by myself during the weekend than psyching myself up to join an admiring mob and then actually doing so. And I enjoyed my own company, my own parade of storylines and what-ifs that get jostled about otherwise when I have my daily duties to attend to. I got better acquainted with my own set of imaginary friends (using S.Meyer's own terminology for her Twilight characters), so I'll see how I can entertain myself with them now that I'm back home.

By the way, there's a correction to last week's post. My review of Eclipse wasn't the first one on Amazon. It was the second, and it's entitled, "Melts in Your Mouth." Now you know.

"Crabbed Age and Youth"

What have I been doing for almost two weeks? Nothing crafty, that's for sure. Oh, except I signed up for an entrelac scarf class, bought some yarn for said class, and visited a new LYS, Twist.

Other than that, I read. And not Harry Potter. No, the big sequel book I have been looking forward to this summer, even more than finding out about the boy wizard's fate, is Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer. I'm one of the lucky Bellafiles who snagged an early copy. (And I have been very dutifully keeping my mouth shut so as not to rub it in to all the less fortunate fandom out there who'd been left in the dark until today, Eclipse's release day.) Now we can all be happy together.

Eclipse is the third in Stephenie Meyer's Twilgiht series about a romance between a teenage mortal and good guy vampire. Sounds pretty done, huh? Yeah, well, not like she's done it, gentle readers. I don't get worked up about vampire books because they tend to take themselves too seriously, but not Bella and Edward. Anyway, I wrote a review about it. Go look at it if you're curious. (Mine's the one on the bottom. I think I got the first review in. Whaddayaknow.)

In the meantime, since I'm a thirty-something house frau whose all enthralled with a YA novel, I took this little Real Age quiz to see how hopelessly immature I am. Turns out, I'm still in my twenties. Thank heaven on high with a Coleman cooler of lime icy-pops! I wouldn't want to go back all the way to high school. Or college for that matter. I'm so over hauling around book bags and feeling vaguely lost in lit. class. (And caring! I felt lost in algebra, too, but couldn't rouse much anxiety over it.)


Poodwaddle.com

Oh, and while we're at it, here's my inner pinup girl. What's yours?

You are Betty Grable

The ulitmate girl next door You're the perfect girl for most guys Pretty yet approachable. Beautiful yet real.

What Famous Pinup Are You?