Oh good Lord

"House votes to condemn media over terror story."

When the government gets angry at the media, you know the media's doing something right.

p.s. GWB was quoted the other day saying something about how the press should exercise its power responsibly. Pot, may I introduce you to kettle?

Last Saturday's menu, before I forget it entirely

Stopped by the Union Sq. farmers' market in a drizzle, then headed over to Stylish BigBox for cheap home stuff. I hope the former balances out the latter.

All the other food came from Market Basket. God bless Market Basket. Cheapest grocery store in America.

Green salad: red-leaf and purple scallions from my farm share plus USFM radish greens and parsley
Summer* crudites: snap peas, real baby carrots, and radishes (all USFM)
Pita with homemade hummus**
Potato chips and sorta sour cream/onion dip: drained yogurt, farm share dill, roasted garlic, the purple scallion tops (much better than ordinary dip. Friggin' awesome, in fact)
Pan bagna: hero bread stuffed with fresh mozzarella, roasted red peppers, homemade olive tapenade, f.s. basil, and balsamic vinegar
Doritos (brought by Lucy when I feared that the potato chips might not hold out)
Brownies, sent back from NY with me by Mom
Blueberry cobbler (with six pints of berries!)
Four kinds of ice cream, courtesy of Larry

Also small dishes of olives and peanuts when I truly did worry that the food would run out. Fortunately, it didn't. Came closer than I'd like, though.

I think that's the menu. I may have forgotten something. Thanks for coming, all!

* Of course, it rained all day.
** I called my mother to get her recipe... and learned she has gone over to the dark side and uses store-bought hummus. I am appalled. Also, this from the woman who routinely makes four different hors d'oeuvres on Thanksgiving, when no one wants hors d'oeuvres anyway.

Sorry to be histrionic, but-- there is a God

Email from the novel-writing teacher:

> Okay, I think we can make it work with 13. I'm copying this to [name] so she knows it's fine with me to go ahead and register you.


Yaaaaaaay!

The "Little Dee" knitting reruns continue

Yesterday and today.

"'Aubade' taped up..."

I thought about Philip Larkin today while listening to a back On Point podcast about Freud. Someone quoted the "They fuck you up, your mum and dad" poem and said summarized Freud's philosophy. Remembered a poem I used to love that referenced Larkin.

Thanks to the glorious internet, I found it. The rhymes and meter now strike me as rather herky-jerky and shoehorned, but I still love that last line.

My Night with Philip Larkin
Rachel Loden

Rendezvous with dweeby Philip in the shower:
"Aubade" taped up on pale blue tile;
I can hear him grumbling through the falling water.
Uncurling steam is scented with a trace of bile,
And I'm as grateful as a thankless child can be.
Someone has been here in this night with me,
Someone whose bitterness, I want to say,
Is even more impressive than my own.
Talking with Larkin on the great white telephone
I let the night be washed out into day

Until it's safe enough to go lie down
And dream of my librarian, my bride.
Perhaps he sits and watches in his dressing gown;
I know he won't be coming to my side
For fumblings and words he simply can't get out.
That stuff was never what it was about
When he would wake at four o'clock to piss
And part the curtains, let the moon go on
With all the things worth doing, and not done,
The things that others do instead of this.

Auugh!

While I played phone tag with Grub Street, the class filled up! I have a plaintive email in to the teacher and I'm first on the waiting list. Supposedly I can also show up for the first class and if one person shows over half an hour late, I'm in. Though that sounds fairly rotten to me.

This was going to be my big venture to get to know the local intelligentsia-- er, other writers who aren't fellow journalist drones or music scenesters. I suck.

Today's Little Dee

(A rerun from a while ago, actually, since comics.com picked up the strip and they need to orient newcomers to the basic setup.)

Linking to image since it can't resize to fit and still be readable.


Oh! Which reminds me of his best knitting strip ever (yet):

Ditto.



(As I say on my dumbspace page, somehow I identify with both the dog and the vulture.)

Closing a door

... that another might open. After I turn in my final Folk Picks column tomorrow, I will be completely done covering music.

Four years ago I sat up all night writing about Alastair Moock as he left for Iowa for his wife's MFA program. I remember the excitement. Now Moock is back east, his wife has her degree, and all I feel is absolute relief that I don't have to see the same bands on the same sun-drenched hills this summer if I don't want to.

That said, the responses to my farewell email make me feel like I'm dying or retiring or moving to Moscow. "Good luck in everything," etc.

Shopping list

blueberries
flour
milk
eggs
chickpeas
pita
onions
garlic
? lentils
? walnuts
? hero bread
? mozzarella/goat cheese
? roasted peppers
snap peas
radishes/something else for the salad
? other veggies
? couscous
? cheese/sausage/bread
mint
yogurt
ice (2-3 bags)
potato chips
? dip fixings
plates
plasticware
cups
? bowls
cheap chairs
cooler
? more serving dishes
limes
? more lemons
hard cider
tonic
starter pack of High Life

p.s. Patience, are you and Himself coming?

Never start a project after midnight; or, why I am still working on the sock

"... so I'll have plenty of time to knit another pair."

Monday night, at about 11:30, I industriously got down to knitting the second pair of booties. (This was after I went to Sears for an a/c, got blindingly confused, and returned home in disgrace. Kate, can you put your "Goodnight Irene" comic online so I can post the "home in disgrace" panel?)

I slipped the socks onto a circular needle and got myself ready with the #2s.

Time I had in spades. More or less. What I did not have was... yarn.

I wound the remaining yellow skein into two balls. Each was the size of a large walnut in its shell. And I didn't have much more in the red.

But who am I to obey physics? I soldiered boldly on and cast on twelve stitches for the sole with the unraveled red gauge swatch.

How a 4" x 4" gauge square could somehow not even complete a 2" x 3" garter stitch bootie sole, I'll never know. Sensibly, I ripped out the sole and decided to make a smaller pair.

Briefly considered cannibalizing pair one for pair two. Who needs all those ridges on the ankle? They look dumb. Besides, a smaller pair would be better for the summer anyway (it was still 90 degrees in the living room).

On the second try, I saw how quickly the pattern ate yarn and gave up on the booties. I decided that I didn't need to make an extra present, since I already had the baby sweater.

Ha ha! Yeah, right. A hat! I definitely have enough yarn for a hat. So I scrolled me over to Lucy's baby hat pattern, "a great quick gift for a new baby." Saw my gauge was within range. Cast on... sixty stitches?

Doesn't that seem like a lot? Well, babies do have disproportionately huge heads.

(Note: After a month using #2s, using the #6s felt like knitting with pencils.)

Dauntless, I cast on and knit a couple rows so I'd have the fabric established for the morning commute. Oh-- there went the gauge yarn again. So soon.

Yes, fellow perfectionists, it was not until this point, well after 1 a.m., that I realized that:

a) I didn't have enough yarn to make anything.
b) My friend will never know I planned to make her a baby set instead of just a sweater.
c) Who the hell wants a snuggly hat for a baby who's due in August?!

But! Still I needed to challenge myself. So I got out the rose yarn to swatch the cardigan. As I checked the impossibly complicated pattern, a darning needle caught my eye. I started sewing in sweater ends. Remembered I still needed buttons.

Which is when it finally hit me that I have a million errands to run and laundry out the wazoo and a party to plan and articles to coordinate, and really the sensible thing is to just knit like an idiot on those endless stockinette/rib rows until I have the brain space to start something new.

Hence, the sock. I put it back on its dpns. Sock sock sock. Sock.

Another yarn post to make Lucy laugh

My mom wants to knit me an afghan/throw. She feels she owes me, since she made my impossibly hard-to-please sister a poncho. Predictably, I demurred and she insisted.

Sunday we investigated a new yarn store we disliked and found a pattern for Manos del Uruguay yarn. Which is gorgeous but expensive, and (I bet) felts the second you wash it.

So yesterday Mom went to her regular yarn store:

They could not have been more helpful and suggested a cheaper option which, depending on how many colors I use, would save between $50 and $100 versus the manos one.... let's see how you like this yarn and colors.

Go to cascadeyarn.com and check out the 220 wool. The colors I chose are:

2001 - burgundy
9338 - heathered green
7807 (eggplant)
7826 (gold)
2414 (rust)
9327 (heathered blue)
4148 (mauve)
9448 (heathered green - a diff. one)

I told her that she can save even more money by taking all my leftover half-skeins of autumn-colored Cascade.

(p.s. No interesting cooking updates, but this weekend I'm going to town.)
(p.p.s. Mom replied and says it's beshert.)

Oh, duh-HUH!

"Quiet No More, Knitters Demand Respect."

(Also the Roxbury Ms. Fixit story.)

I'm too hot to take pictures

Therm reads 90 degrees in the hot room of the house. I am heading over to Best Buy. I cave. Seven years in this city yesterday, and I've never had an air conditioner. But I can't bear to think of Eva broiling in this apartment.

Of course, Best Buy may be sold out.

Speaking of bad timing: Today, as I picked up stitches on the sock (which has stopped being complicated and therefore also stopped being interesting) I suddenly thought: What am I doing knitting a wool sock when I have a perfectly good, albeit scary and intimidating, thin lace wraparound cardigan waiting to be knit? A cardigan that I can't even wear after October 1?

I don't want to leave projects unfinished, especially at the boring point that makes it less likely that I'll take the project up again. (Next time definitely toe-up, magic loop, two at a time.) I could finish sock one, cast on for sock two, knit an inch, then stop. For the psychological impact.

Every day I spend on the sock makes it all the more likely that I will have wool socks for Bastille Day and a thin, light, wraparound cardigan for Halloween.

Anyway, I have to put the sock on stitch holders and knit the second pair of booties this week. Finally bought ribbons tonight, so I can finally give the downstairs baby his booties. The idea tickles me around the edges that I could just give the first pair to its original intended recipient... no. I'm being nice, damn it.

Must remember to finish the sweater stitching, etc. or I'll end up doing it an hour before the shower, after my (ahem) small festivities the night before.

Limited progress on Boswell because I've been knitting, rawking, and away. Novel: I'm on the verge of writing a rather large check to Grub Street, but I recently committed to working as the City Weekly Somerville correspondent for five weeks in August-plus. Can I possibly do both?

p.s. Lucy will not be surprised to know that I whisked into the ribbon store five minutes before closing!

Pride goeth

Reasons I dislike this Regia Stretch sock yarn:
- Splitty
- Fuzzy
- Utterly intolerant of frogging; i.e., if you rip anything out or drop a stitch the stitch you need to pick up is, I swear, the size of a blackfly. Minus wings.

So I picked up the gusset a second time from a slightly inside stitch. This creates a ridge along the inside of the sock. Will this drive my foot crazy so that I hate the damn socks and never wear them and eventually give them away with a guilty expression?

I said I wouldn't

And I didn't.



One turned sock. I am hating the Regia stretch yarn slightly less now, but if I ever knit this again I'll learn magic loop technique so there are only four needle ends to lose stitches from, not eight. Only problem:



The gusset gapes like a toothless mouth. I should've picked up stitches deeper into the flap instead of using the loose slipped end ones. I figure I'll run some yarn through the holes to tighten them up, though it makes me feel like a big yarn loser. (As did dropping stitches so badly that I twice needed help to pick them up.)

So now to an undeniably successful experiment: Sunday's kebabarama!



Sautéed farm share kale and minted yogurt sauce.



Lamb shish kebabs. About three-fifths of the total. I have been eating lamb all week. Same with the lemon poundcake and strawberries macerated in Cointreau and mint.

Five dishes: A procrastination menu if I ever saw one. (Latest minor triumph.) I had deadlines Monday and Tuesday.

Kitty helped.




Hence I haven't finished signing up for the novel-writing class yet, though I did download the forms. Boswell: 232.

But: Covering Worldwide Knit in Public Day was certainly fun. Though my nails turned blue, my multitasking dedication earned me a new title:



"Sock reporter."

No.

Can't blog. Deadline. Plus cat-feeding and coffee. No time to discuss my latest minor triumph, my Sunday kebabarama, or my new status as a "sock reporter." No. Stop. Write.

Brief update

I think I've finally recovered from spending 3-1/2 damp 'n' chilly hours under the Au Bon Pain awning taking notes and knitting the sock, so it's time to take me and my stupendously frizzy hair out to Canton, MA (oog) for fiddles, ceilidh dancing, and (I hope) good single-malt Scotch I don't have to pay for. Some updates:

- Finished about 5" on sock#1. Which is also frizzy.
- Page 216 of Boswell.
- Signing up for a novel-writing class, to start in mid-July.
- Menu-planning for Sunday night's dinner guests.
- A nerdboarder turned me on to Luke Chueh, and now I want to cry:

"The Queen Is Dead"

- Told my mom's friend (in NY) whose son just moved to Boston about my Yankees --> Red Sox conversion experience. Immediately then pitched it to CW. From the email:

When I found myself in a Cambridge bar in the famous playoffs game at that famous moment when Grady Little left Pedro in and the Yanks fans cheered, and I realized that I was screaming at the TV "When the opposite side's fans cheer you know you're doing something REALLY @#$%ING WRONG," well... I knew I had changed sides.

Feed the cats, tuppence a bag

Ordered cat food from petco.com, thanks to a kind gift certificate that's only good at the online store. Arrived damp, with a hole torn into the box (and the bag). (Thanks to Freecycle, I have actually found a taker for the food... don't ask me what they'll use it for.) Called customer support. So sorry, we'll send you out a new one right away. Two-three days later, come home to find a box on the porch. With a hole torn into it (and the bag).

Why did it take me two shipments to realize that leaving a box of cat food out on a porch will draw every sharp-toothed stray in the neighborhood?

(p.s. I'm exchanging this bag at the bricks-and-mortar.)

Etymology question

What are the chances that "heebie-jeebies" started life as an anti-Semitic slur? The OED is very little help.

1926 MAINES & GRANT Wise-Crack Dict. 9/2 Heebie-jeebies, alcoholic shimmy. 1926 Bulletin 13 Dec. 5/5 The latest dance, the ‘Heebie-Jeebies’ is said to represent the incantations made by Red Indian witch doctors before a human sacrifice.

but of course, who knows whether the Bulletin 13 knew what it was talking about.

Spring greens

First, a poem, snagged off (oof) slate.com:

"I Realized I Was Happy and It Scared Me"
-- Rich Ives

Something had to have been here before me
for here to be here, so sometimes
I say I'd like a little silence,

to see if I can discover what it was,
but what I really want is quiet, in which
you hear just a few things

better, which is not silence,
in which you hear one thing
Again and again and again

and it's not even there.
--

I won't post another picture of the sock until I've turned the heel, which date recedes as I fuck up the cable on the T again and again.

First day of the farm share. My fourth year in a row, sixth total, though I'm with a new farm this year. I'll rhapsodize about my love for the farm share some other time. Because I could use some renewal this week, I decided to make a renewal salad: Everything fresh, nothing from the fridge. It's a sparse salad, yes, but it's all new.



Salad mix, radishes, radish greens, and green garlic tops. I also made pizza:



Sautéed turnips and green garlic bulbs, fresh mozzarella, parmesan, homemade dough (from the freezer).
--

Since I'm not giving a knitting project progress report and I haven't touched the novel, I will give a reading project progress report. I am slowly making my way through Boswell's Life of Johnson. Why? Because it's there! It is also...



Long. 1400 pages. I tell myself that if I read ten pages every night before bed, I will finish it in less than half a year! So, tonight I am on:



(page 164). Wish me luck. After this, it's back to Ulysses.

--
Finally, a knitting etiquette question. The people downstairs. Our relationship started on a tentative note (I told them about my new cat), which soon turned decidedly shaky when I inadvertently used the basement washing machine that was, er, their washing machine. It wasn't so much my mistake as the fact that the guy was so agitated he ran out with wet hair in his bathrobe to alert me. Oh, and we don't talk that often because we're always just in passing and it somehow seems awkward to start a real conversation. Maybe we're all at least situationally shy. Still, they seem like nice warm-'n'-slightly-hippie people, and I'd like to make friends.

Well, I didn't actually recognize that the wife was pregnant (compared to the humongousness of my various pregnant work friends) but I did notice a preponderance of baby items arriving so I eventually figured it out. Sunday, I looked outside and noticed the guy had his battered white Celica's doors open. Cleaning the car, I figured. Half an hour later, doors still open. I got it. Went downstairs to head out. The exchange:

DJD: "Oh, you're putting in the car seat? So exciting!"
Mr. Hippie: "Yeah, well, we have a bigger, safer car in the garage, but I just thought I'd try it out in this one."
DJD: [mmhmms agreement] [pause] "So, when's the baby due?"
Mr. Hippie: "Last Thursday."

I offered to give them my phone number and check on the cats. But lo and behold, when I slipped my number by their door later, the Celica was gone... and did not return. Today a larger, safer car returned, and when I walked up the stairs I glimpsed (without actually spying/peeking/prying) the two of them standing over a wee pink baby on what probably is a changing table. So exciting!

So here's the etiquette question, and thank you for reading. I have a perfectly good pair of Reebok 80s high-top style baby booties all knit and ready to go for one of the humongous work friends. Whose shower isn't for another two weeks, so I have plenty of time to knit another pair. Should I leave the booties for the neighbor baby, or would that be too awkward given our tentative relationship? I'd like to give them the booties.

Here, a picture:



p.s. I just ate on the couch... uh oh.

I'm procrastinating

My latest minor triumph, the estimable high-school graduate. Sometime I might remember to recount the tale of the interview, which falls under the ever-expanding "Adventures in Journalism" file. But now I have another deadline. And an event to cover tomorrow. And I really need to try to wrap up the softball story already (if it ever stops raining on weekends). And pitch a short on Knit in Public Day (hey, why not get paid to go to something I want to attend anyway?).

The sock proceeds apace:



Now, for scale, my besocked foot:



Um. Will I need to buy size 3s and cast this on a sixth time? Lucy says...



No. Thank God for this rather annoying but fantastically stretchy Regia yarn. (In my last knitting life, I was a Cascade 220, size 6 diehard. More another time.)

Speaking of Lucy, I ditched work due to bad events and the indomitable Kate came up to rescue not only my emotional state but my confidence in adulthood. Yes, after six weeks in my lovely solo apartment, I finally stopped eating on the couch and picked up the table Lucy offered me. A coat of Murphy's Oil Soap and a piece of Indian cotton later-- cut from the also-ever-expanding sheet my mom bought me years ago-- and we have:

THIS!

My cozy little eating space in my gorgeously roomy kitchen. Note small mug filled with bourbon. Yeah, I have to get to work.

In unrelated fun-with-digital news, my elegant and cattitudinal Eva:



Adopted six weeks ago, has suddenly turned into:



Demon cat.

p.s. The neighbors downstairs and knitted goods: Sudden change.
p.p.s. Kate and I wondered today-- who on earth discovered knitting? Who thought "Hey, why don't I take this perfectly good sheepskin, take the fleece off, twist it into ropes, and knot it up into fabric when I could just wear the sheepskin as it is"?

My new role model

(Also, I got the socks safely through 1-1/2 cable repeats yesterday, and I'm thinking that the beautiful sea-color silk should be some kind of openwork scarf... seems a shame to hide it as socks.)

From a Boston Globe Magazine interview with novelist and grandmother Tabitha King, 57, wife of Stephen:

[Second excerpt first.]

"I think, in general, human beings fear things they shouldn't and don't fear things they should. Like anybody else, if the plane drops, I'm going to scream. Otherwise, it's cool, man. We're all going to give up our ticket one of these days. Fear to me is a stopper. It stops you from moving forward. Steve is very unhappy about flying, always has been. But flying is this extraordinary experience that's only been available since this 20th century. And if you believe in a purpose to things, maybe it is important that we see our earth from a height. You can't love something without knowing it. And fear keeps us from knowing things."

"We met at the University of Maine. He published a long, rambling, funny essay in the student paper. I remember reading that and saying, 'I could've done this.'... He was that rare thing-- a Big Man on Campus who was not an athlete. I was walking to work at the library one day and a co-worker said, 'That's Steve King.' And I see this shambling man, very ragged. He was wearing, not shoes, but cut-off gum rubbers, and I discovered that's all he had. I never met anybody so poor in all my life, and I didn't come from anything like wealth. But right from the beginning, I thought he was as good as any published writer I knew. I think it impressed him that I appreciated what he did. He also was hot for my boobs."

Lucy's sale

My not-very-impressive, but lovely, purchases from the Mind's Eye sale.