Sweet relief, and hand me a beer

Conversation I had several years ago with Laura, a university health educator who moonlights as a dyed-in-the-wool roots-music fan.

(Overheard) L: You tell him to come to me as soon as his last exam is over, and I will be there. With a beer.
D: Shouldn't you be recommending meditation or something?
L: Sometimes the cause of public health is best served by Being There with a Beer.

--

No pictures for you today (last week's Iron CSA remains un-immortalized). But 7/15 to this Sunday = thirteen bylines, on top of my full-time job.

Got praised for five pages of the Purported Novel this week. Quite a relief/prod, since I thought that they were awkward and who is this protagonist guy anyway and probably I should stop now instead of wasting any more time.

Evidence that I worked way too hard: Hey, all I have to do now is work forty hours a week! (And spend more time on the P.N.)

BUT:

- All the extra freelancing is @#$%ing over as of 3pm today.
- I'm even done feeding the beasts downstairs.
- I'm'a going to a Nonlabor party this weekend.
- I'm'a hosting a small Nonlabor get-together myself.
- My root canal didn't hurt (though this temporary crown drives me twitchy and costs a ton).
- Nova Scotia, here I come.
- I've already read a book.
- The cooking continues apace.
- I have created the official holiday knitting list... cloaked in secrecy to maintain the surprise for any potential reader who just might get a stocking in the ol' stocking, that is, if I finish any knitting projects now that I have time to read and go out.

- Body-count mittens for my activist cousin L. Heard about these from the Cast On podcast. Apparently they're in the new Interweave Knits, but I'll probably use any old pattern. [Note: Checked the website-- no sign.] You make one mitten at a time and knit the Iraq body count into each. Thus the second number > the first.

- Hand-covering things for people A. and B.

- Foot-covering thing for person C.

- Perhaps: Leg-covering thing for person D.
(This is getting a little cryptic, isn't it?)

- Eventually: Finish a head-covering thing I started for person E.'s birthday five years ago.

- Unlikely: Some gorgeous openwork scarf for my mom. (But could I hit on something she'd love?)

Appropriately disguised photos to follow if I ever start any of this stuff. I did buy the needles for person C.'s gift last week. Granted, they are the wrong needles. But still.

I hope my Embarrassing Theater audition thing ends quickly so I can get down to cousin L.'s alt-transport party and eat some hummus.

Tomatoes, bad cell phone pictures, and re-restarting the cardi: August 2006 summarized

Off to the Red Fire Farm annual tomato fest today to pick cherry tomatoes in the rain. Just last week or so I complained about the lack of variety in my farm share's tomato selection. Well...


Tomatoes.



Lots of tomatoes. Approximately sixty different kinds, the farm workers say. How many did I try?


Every single one in the tomato tent, of course. This is about a quarter of the selection. Clearly they're hoarding them for the shareholders out home in Granby, MA.

After all that, I still like Brandywines the best. (I'm a little disappointed in myself.) KY Beefsteak and Black Truffle rated distant seconds.

In the cherry category: Favorita (red) and White Currant (pale yellow, winey). I picked about a pint of each. Iron CSA take two. I've figured out how to use the celery, but what to do with two pints' worth of cherry tomatoes, some already split?

(Fri.-Sat. I baked homemade pizza and a white-peach cobbler, but no pictures.)

Now, in the two-steps-forward-one-step-back category...



This is the third? shot at the cardigan, itself frogged back halfway once after I inadvertently turned the right side wrong.

What's that you say? You don't see what's different? Sheesh. Nobody understands me. See, cardi-alpha was size small, #1 needles on the ribbing. Cardi-beta, size medium, #1s on the ribbing and #2s on the lace. Splitting the difference, cardi-gamma is size small, #2 needles all the way through. I still have cardi-beta in case gamma kicks the Grecian urn.

(p.s. Dick Clark is a sad reminder that no quantity of hair dye and facelifts will keep you from dying. Unfortunately, Barry Manilow doesn't seem to realize that. Yes, I'm watching the Emmys while "working" on the couch. The rain sounds soothing. I wish I were my cat who toils not, neither does she spin. Well, the latter's true of me, at least.)



I am green-eyed with jealousy. So to speak. Or maybe that's her. Wait. Whuh?

Gloria Steinem, rock on

From Rebecca Traister's Salon article bashing the Forbes article "Don't Marry Career Women":

p.s. To bypass the annoying Salon "day pass" ads, start at this nifty link.

The piece was so utterly ludicrous that for some, it was hard to do much but laugh. "I'm deeply grateful to Forbes Magazine for saving many women the trouble of dealing with men who can't tolerate equal partnerships, take care of their own health, clean up after themselves or have the sexual confidence to survive, other than a double standard of sexual behavior," wrote Gloria Steinem in an e-mail. "Since a disproportionate number of such unconfident and boring guys apparently read Forbes, the magazine has performed a real service."

You saw it here first, kids

Lucy's new batch of soon-to-sell-out, hand-dyed yarn!



Oh, I'm sorry. Did you want a decent picture of Lucy's hand-dyed yarn? You're visiting the wrong blog. In the last day or so I have taken lousy pictures of:



That sweater thing I'm making, with the lace part stretched out noticeably farther than the bottom.



That same sweater, stretched out, showing still a noticeable difference between the top and the bottom (and showing my complete lack of beach visits this summer. I do not deserve to live on the coast).



Some yarn that looks suspiciously like the very beginning of a second try at the sweater. Fortunately, judging from Sunday and today, the camera fairies like tomatoes.



I haven't done any proper cooking since the weekend-- just tomato/goat cheese sandwiches, sautéed kale, steamed broccoli, cubed melon, etc. Basic but good. I'm not convinced that I could do anything with those tomatoes that would taste as luscious as a plain old sandwich. Hooray for late summer.

That said, we will be airing another episode of Iron CSA this week. The secret ingredient is...

CELERY



What the @#$% do I do with this?

(Extra points for incorporating last week's leftover fennel tops. I asked Lucy what I should make with the fennel tops. She thought a moment and said, "... compost."

--
p.s. Five briefs turned in, some work on the Supposed Novel. Back to reading Boswell before bed.

Breaking the back of the puzzle

Lots of pictures today to leaven the recent loaf of, so to speak, majorly high-fiber/wordy posts.

The tougher NY Times crosswords-- Thursday-Sunday-- nearly always have a gimmick. All the long answers fit some scheme. There may be boxes that use two letters, or a number, or something like that. Once I hit the scheme, it all falls together. I call it breaking the back of the puzzle.

Well.





This is what happens when one finally knits during normal waking hours. Since I am following the pattern, and everyone loves the pattern, I can only assume that the huge strange mega width difference between the ribbing and lace will work out in the wash. The yarn supply still troubles me, but for now I just want to keep going.

Except that I am sitting on my hands trying not to run out and buy yarn to knit Knucks for every boy I know, and a couple I don't. (Kate. Stop me.)



I don't have time, obviously, this weekend. I have to write and visit and clean and buy cat stuff. But still... urg. Especially since I'll get to take on the challenge of learning how to knit magic loop and fair isle at the same time!

More pretty pictures:



Corn chowder with zucchini, leek, green pepper, and tomatoes; potato-beet salad with fennel, thyme, and dill

(Pardon the lousy photograph. I can't figure out how to take good close-ups indoors.)

Minor disappointment with my farm share: The farmer seems to prefer standard tomatoes to heirlooms. So I made my usual pilgrimage to the USFM to round out my supply.



Mmm, gorgeous.

Later in Union Sq., DJ Dave kicked my ass at arty mini-golf (spearheaded by the James Kochalka of Somerville, Jef Czekaj)



But I was still, har har, the star.



--
There are no pretty pictures of writing.

Courting public embarrassment for fun and (non)profit

So... some lovers of schadenfreude have set up a performance thing where people get up and read the most embarrassing stuff they have around from their youth. Diary entries, love letters, etc.

Procrastinating while cleaning my house, I came across an old camp yearbook and promptly wanted to drop through the floor. So I submitted it. Aaand....

--
We have just returned from our summer vacation and would love to hear your stuff for consideration to be in one of our upcoming fall shows.

--

Oh my.

In other horribly awesome news: Possibly the best thing on the internet, ever, at least for left-wing NY Times junkies like me.

Trusting one's instincts; or, Am I or am I not screwed?

The cardi (sigh).

The question: Do I have enough yarn?

Lucy, back from retreat and therefore even more soothing than usual, says yes. I can make cropped '50s sleeves if need be, she says. I can always rip back (arrrrrgh. I'm too slow to want to rip back and redo).

She also told me, nicely, to chill the @#$% out.

So I started the lace. Which, naturally, I promptly had to rip out. I fixed row #1 after learning that I evidently have read charts backwards for who knows how long. I then screwed up row #3 twice before I realized that if I just used my eyes instead of the pattern it would be completely obvious what to do where.

Thus: Refreshed by Zen reassurance, determined to follow my instincts from now on (well, for this project, at least. No promises about the rest of my life), I came to work and found... oh dear.

At this juncture, it is appropriate to point out that I'm not actually out of my mind. If you wrote down every eddy of your thought process, you too might look like a watch spring with a serious case of OCD.

A kind soul on the Knitty Board had offered to run my gauge and yardage through Ann Budd's Book That Helps You Figure Such Things Out:

She says that, at a gauge of 7 st/inch (which is the pattern's stated gauge *for the lace*, it's even more for the stockinette, but 7st/in is the highest she goes), you would need 2003 yards for a 36" finished chest circumference. [...]

If you have 4 skeins of your 400yd yarn, at 1600 yds, I hate to say it, but I think you might be a little screwed. :( Is it too late to incorporate mods for contrast color yarn?

Whom/what to believe? The guru or the math?

Anyway, here are the options:

- Just knit the @#$%ing cardi and stop talking about it already. If the yarn runs out on the sleeves, you can always knit some extra borders or some-odd in the same color you use for the 1985875932^3-inch ties. (Um, would that look good?) Experiment with not worrying.

- Buy yarn in a complementary color, frog the cardi, start over with the new color on the ribbing and the pretty wine shade on the lace. Alternatively, use the wine shade on the ribbing and frog zilch.

- Check Lucy's exchange policy; if amenable, swap the three untouched (but wound) skeins for five skeins of new yarn, keeping the original skein for the ties; if not, buy five new skeins and keep the wine stuff to knit a sweater for someone you really, really love who's smaller than you (i.e., Anna). Frog and start over.

The advantage of the second two options is that I could then make a longer sweater, and all worry would vamoose. The disadvantage is that they suck.

Obviously I need to Make a Decision. Votes?

--
On a blessed-relief, easy-peasy note, I cooked sautéed greens/broccoli, spicy pickled cucumbers, and potato-beet proto-salad-- it's been cooked and dressed with oil and vinegar but needs something to make it interesting. Fennel? I like the idea, but I never know what herbs and spices to use with it. Later this week: corn chowder.

Eva's baby pictures...

are coming soon!

First, the boring stuff: I made ratatouille and beet bread yesterday. Still working on the pinkness of the bread.



It looks plenty pink on top, but the inside is mostly brown.

Okay. Now. Claudia, the Gifford shelter manager, asked around and learned what happened to Eva before she came to the shelter. I'm happy to learn that she was never exactly a stray.

Someone found Eva and her sister Lily as kittens on Brewster St. (Southie?) in Nov. 2004. That person took the kittens in for a short while before handing them over to a neighbor. During that time, the kittens went in and out to visit their mom under the porch. Apparently Eva got along with the neighbor's dog (not that I want a dog, but it's good to know). After a time, the neighbor turned the kittens over to a shelter/foster home in Tewksbury. The manager wanted to place the sisters as a pair, but Lily had problems that made her essentially unadoptable. Eventually the foster mom adopted Lily and handed Eva... then known by her alias Lola, which she dropped as soon as she came to me... over to Gifford, where I saw her furry little self huddling away in a Booda dome.

And now she's sleeping on my bed.



And hunting the elusive camera cord.





Claudia will send me Eva's kitten pictures as soon as she gets them. Ooh! I'm so excited. I'll stop before I go all gooshy.

From "The Ethicist" (NYT)

"There is genuine good in achieving a more profound understanding of the world and the human heart."

"Flog to death or accept"

Thus says my horoscope. Which means:

- Accept that you will be knitting a cropped sweater.
- Be grateful, in fact, if you even have enough yarn for the cropped sweater, since you bought for size small and not medium.
- Wait patiently until Lucy returns to advise you on the yarn quantity question.
- Return to the sock. Ah yes, the sock.



(Well, I had to improve the bad cellphone photo somehow.)

- Cook the @#$%ing squash.

By this angst may all beings be free of suffering.

Eyes, meet stomach

(Started Sunday, posted late Tuesday. Blar.)

Books on the table. Knitting projects in my dreams (13, 17, 18). Articles to write. Things to do with squash. Wait, I might not have quite enough things to do with summer squash. I brainstormed a list on Saturday. The list ended "DAMN IT I JUST DON'T LIKE SQUASH."

But I managed:



- "Three Sisters" corn chili with zucchini, pinto beans, and tomato. (Jalapeño and guajillo chiles, tons of cumin, a slug of beer.) It was fine. Nothing to write home-- er, a blog entry about. Largely corn and beans, since the zucchini and tomato all but dissolved. Basically a fresh-tasting version of some 70s canned casserole. I might give some away.



- Breakfast potatoes with summer squash and garlic; cage-free eggs with a dash of the green Goya chile sauce that isn't spicy. Surprisingly tasty. Was it the organic vegetables, the cage-free eggs (which I have never bought before), my new canister of sea salt? Note the cast-iron love.

Query: Why is it so hard for me to convince myself to pony up for cage-free eggs? They seem so very much more expensive.

- The (yawn) usual minor triumph. The briefs don't seem to be online.

- The cardi is now as long as a steno pad is wide. Or something like that.





I tried to measure it against my back and succeeded only in taking a photo of a down-at-the-heels, magnified, hippie Mondrian with unusual coloration:



Tuesday update: The cardi may have almost reached its prescribed length, even factoring in the loss of height when I try to stretch it across my back. It looks very short. I don't like short sweaters. I don't know that I have enough yarn to make a longer one.

- And finally, something from the Paper of Record that simply amuses me.

... the idea came not from some Mattel consultant but from a 30-year veteran of “Sesame Street, ” Tony Geiss, whose most significant previous creations were the Honkers, monsters who communicate by honking their noses.

Honk? Honk!

Email upon reading The New Yorker

p.s. Here's hoping that Ruth Stone doesn't Google herself... I just remembered what happened the last time I criticized a poem. And for "juvenile," read "something a self-consciously outrageous fifteen-year-old would write in a poetry workshop."

From: Me
To: Kate
Date: 8/5/06 9:41 p.m.

For the first time ever, I have subscribed to the Magazine of Record I Guess. I only did it because I got the world's cheapest rate through the Soc. for Prof. Journalists ($25). I have only rarely read this magazine, so I swear I don't have any preconceived notions about it. And you know what? This issue, at least, kind of sucks. To note:

- A long, wandering, themeless essay by John Updike about great writers' final works. I won't even bother to quote.
- A poem by Ruth Stone called "The Fig Tree" that is unimaginably juvenile.

Old as the world,
lithe and smooth,
her skin cool as a python's,
she offers fat tongues of syrup
embedded with her seeds.
<...>
She sways while a thousand beating wings
deflower her.

WTF?
- A cartoon caption contest that is painfully lame. Hey, want to go online and vote for the finalists for the July 24th contest? The cartoon shows a guy on the phone staring at a clock that has symbols (? # ! @ etc.) instead of numbers. Your choices:
"The hours here are obscene."
"Oh, sorry. I forgot about the time difference."
"Let me call you back in an umlaut."

The last one is kind of cute, but seriously. These are the finalists.

This magazine gets two more chances to not be lame before I cancel.

In unrelated news, last night I dreamed that I tried to comfort Britney Spears after she filed for legal separation from the father of her two children, and she seduced me.

Fathers and sisters

- F.
As I posted on the Knittyboard holiday-project follow-along thread, the last time I knit anything for my dad I quit knitting for five years. True story. I wanted to make something he would actually wear. So I bought ragingly expensive gray alpaca yarn (hmm, still have half in the leftovers bag) and chose a simple (read: boring) basket-stitch square pattern. Think J. Crew.

I knit until the scarf was long enough for him to hang around his neck, and gave it to him on the needles so he could choose the final length. He wanted a scarf he could wrap.

When I finished, the scarf was taller than me. Give the People What They Want.

(Despite numerous verbal reassurances from him and my mom, I am not convinced that he wears this scarf.)

Anyway, this means no more knitted gifts for Dad. For superstition's sake. It's like the opposite of not changing your socks when you're on a hitting streak. Hm... a hitting streak... socks...



Damn it. Father's Day 2007, here I come.

(Speaking of Stitch 'n' Pitch, cute idea but how do you keep score if your hands are full of knitting?)

- S.
Mmm, gazpacho for lunch:



Next up: Since I have corn and squash, I want to make a "three sisters" dish with beans (and a ton of chile peppers). My head keeps questioning how the mildly squashy taste of summer squash will complement corn; i.e., will it? I dunno. I've checked some online recipes, but they all either (a) interpret squash as winter and corn as hominy or (b) suck. Pondering.

From the same Laura Ingalls Wilder segment of my brain that craves a tortilla press, even though I have a yogurt maker I don't use... I want to make homemade granola bars. Have you read the ingredient list for those things? Marion Nestle is gonna impede women's progress by putting me full-time in the kitchen cooking nothing but unprocessed ingredients.

p.s. Grabbed from Teleknitter: Aww!



A kitty with yarn on its head!

Laundry list

I've had quite a few minor triumphs lately, though I have no mind for them in my mad rush to try to get anyone, anyone from a government press department to call me back. Fortunately all is filed for this week, and now I have, let's see, one hour and ten minutes before I have to cover my next event.

(I'm especially pleased/relieved about those first two stories, which I started in January and June.)

And now for the fun stuff!

When not taking notes or rapidly decompensating via email to Kate, I've been...

- K2P2 ribbing myself into oblivion while, of course, fretting over the length of this thing and can I make it longer and but then what if I run out of yarn. Last night I decided to torture myself by fretting over the fact that once I am done with the cardi proper, the patternmaker wants me to knit 84 inches of nine-stitch K1P1 edging/tie. Oog.

(Yes, I know that I really should take up Lucy's pursuit.)

Fortunately, logic says I won't have to worry about the edging for at least three months, since all I've completed so far is



... just over one old-school-but-not-THAT-old-school 3.5" floppy disk container's worth of the back of the sweater!

(Pardon the cellphone photo.)

- Amalgamating the farm share. Ben won Iron CSA (okay, so only two people faced off). I made whole-wheat fettucine with severely browned onions/summer squash, diced tomato, basil, mint (USFM), and diced fresh mozzarella. Yum. Then it got scorching and I didn't cook until...

Last night, when I in fact did not "cook" but assembled salad and gazpacho from the godonlyknowshowmany pounds of farm share I lugged home that day. Ten potatoes, five ears of corn, five tomatoes, huge bunch of parsley... and that's half the share!

(Pardon lack of pictures.)

And now I'm going to write something so jovial and entertaining that you will run off clicking your heels like Dorothy all the way into the still-steamy night! I just need some time to think about it and hound some press people again.