Tuesday Project Roundup:

I haven't mentioned yet that I have this week off, which means this pile of materials will probably be at least half finished by this time next week: The floral in the middle is the stuff from Japan, obviously not stuck in customs. And see that yarn? I couldn't decide which blue to order for the pullover sweater, so I changed projects completely. Now I will have a nice neutral cardigan that matches what I'll make out of the fabric.

Toby approves of my staying home this week.

Now For 1,500,001

You've all seen this. 1.5 million people on YouTube have seen it. But I think we all need to see it again on Monday:

The Cat On A Roomba Video!


Enjoy.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. My Japanese fabric is in customs in San Fransisco. I hope it's not stuck.

2.I've been fresh out of political outrage (burned out, rather) and haven't been paying much attention to the economy or the bailouts or the First Puppy. But I read a post that changed my mind about whether we should give automakers any part of that huge aid package: I thought those greedy fat cats could wither and die but this made me realize that there are people behind the fat cats, and abandoned machine shops, and that it all ties in with my own ethos of "create something." So here: Don't let them die. (It's long, but good. There are pictures, too!)

3. Mr. Isbell announced this morning, "If Toby did work for free, it would be Tobono."

Words That Shouldn't Be

1. Spearheading
2. Drive, in any sense other than "operate a vehicle" or "move cattle"

(Why yes, I am still writing things for Microsoft. How could you tell?)

A Poem About Getting New Stuff To Wear For The Fall

This is a subject that has been on my mind the last month or two. I've been spending the second paychecks with abandon (not the point of a second job, really, but I did need shoes and jeans, and knee socks and fabric are ALMOST essential). Emily Dickinson understands, though:

#12

The morns are meeker than they were—
The nuts are getting brown—
The berry's cheek is plumper—
The Rose is out of town.

The Maple wears a gayer scarf—
The field a scarlet gown—
Lest I should be old fashioned
I'll put a trinket on.

(I found that poem on this blog, which is one of my new favorites. Be sure to check out the "imaginary outfit" category, in which she imagines what she'd wear if she were a children's book author, or rode a Vespa, or was a physicist. Fun...but it makes me want to buy more things.)

Tuesday Project Roundup: I'm A Lumberjack and I'm OK

I got inspired to sew again--inspired by Paul Bunyan, that is!

I used a shirtdress pattern from the 70's
and posed like the pattern model:
While it may look like a nightshirt, a plaid flannel dress is actually like wearing a bathrobe all day. It's really comfy.

Things To Look Forward To This Week

1. A new space heater arriving for Toby. (We've been borrowing Minas Heatas from my parents.) The new one isn't tower-shaped, though, so it will need a different Lord of the Rings name. Helm's Heat, maybe?

2. The start of Christmas gift knitting. Will I finish at 11:00 on Christmas Eve, like last year? We'll see!

3. Fabric coming from Japan. I splurged just a little (mostly on shipping, obviously), had to figure out meters needed instead of yards, and convert yen to dollars--but the fabric is awesome and I can track the package online. It left Kyoto prefecture and arrived in Osaka prefecture sometime yesterday, although the whole time difference is stumping me this morning.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. "Chicken tractor" is the best word combination I've heard all week, but it's an actual item, too: A floorless, moveable chicken coop so your chickens can scratch and eat bugs in whatever part of your garden needs cultivation. There's a gallery online, which included this literal interpretation:

2. From BoingBoing: The Internet Anagram Server + "Quantum of Solace," the latest James Bond movie opening today = 18,258 possible titles, including:

• A Quantum Of Close
• Futons Equal Coma
• Scam Unequal Foot
• Aqua Focus Melt On

3. The baby alpacas are charging you! Run!

Utah Politics: We're Actually Quite Sophisticated. Really.

Newly-elected Utah House speaker Dave Clark made this mystifying analogy in yesterday's paper. About the need for ethics reform, he said:

"It was like we had a car in the barn that had been sitting there for 10 years. We fired it up and ran it around the track and parts of it weren't working as well as we thought. Until we took it for a test drive, we didn't know, so it caught us off guard, but that's why we're proposing that we put these items up for discussion."

Wow, I just can't wait until January!

That's A Lot Of Cat Pictures

This is my 700th post. I wonder if I need to add a "Since 2006" subhead to the blog header. And I really need to work on making the archives a little easier to search. Because what if you remember a cat picture you want to see again?

Tuesday Project Roundup: Bilbo Had A Vest LIke This, Too

I did finish the vest over the weekend and it turned out about 95% as wearable as I hoped. (The armholes are a little long; I was in too much of a hurry to check them.) The contrasting red faced hem (worked kind of like this, but at the end of the sweater, not the beginning) turned out really well, and overall I like it. It looks very rustic to me, like something that would be worn in the Shire where life is simple, the yarn is purple, and nobody wants to go far from home.


However, you'll notice there are no pockets yet. I tried experimenting with an inset pocket (like on a suit jacket) on a swatch and that was really alarming:
It's already become a cat toy.

But a Shire vest has to have pockets, my precious, so now I'm considering patch pockets (like the back of jeans) versus further experimentation with an inset pocket. We'll see.

Details: Free pattern here, with the lace and extra bands edited out.
Yarn is Beaverslide fisherman weight, in "Nightshade."

Also: Happy Veterans Day today to Dad and Mr. Isbell! Thank you!

It's Monday

Attack it like it's an empty garment bag.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. According to kottke.org, The NY Times edition Wednesday was only the fifth time in its history that it used 96 pt. type in a headline. In chronological order:

• MEN WALK ON MOON
  
• NIXON RESIGNS
  
• 01/01/2000
• U.S. ATTACKED
  
• OBAMA

2. I got sucked back into writing for Microsoft at work and was updating a campaign promoting Windows Vista. Client feedback: "I think it promotes Vista too much." Ah, the head-smacking world of Microsoft...

3. The weather: I don't approve of it.

3.

Getting Back To Normal: Let's Talk About Yarn Now

I hope to finish the vest soon (Mr. Isbell has more weekend commitments and I have Brideshead Revisted), which means I'm going to need another project lined up. Continuing the "wearability" theme, I've decided it's going to be a plain pullover crewneck sweater--no fancy cut, no shaping, no stitch patterns.

I know the yarn should be from the magic Montana ranch but I can't decide on the color. I had been thinking navy for wearability, but now I'm tempted by sky blue. A navy blue sweater would be pretty and wearable, but I know that a sky blue one is going to make me happier, getting dressed in the dark cold dead of winter. It just isn't as versatile. Which one should I pick? (And thank goodness this is the my only problem right now, too; not how to get Mr. Isbell a passport and get him, Toby, and myself to Canada.)

THANK YOU, AMERICA. FINALLY.

I'm very proud of you. (Except for those who voted for Proposition 8 and those who re-elected Chris Buttars. I'm not proud of you.) But most of us did a pretty good job, I think.

You Know What To Do Today!

Image from Cute Overload, of course, with the full song up on their home page today.

(All stoats aside, though, we really, really want Obama to win. Because if McCain wins, Mr. Isbell will more than likely get called up out of inactive duty and sent back to Iraq. Or Iran. Or Afghanistan. Because the Geezer Express has made no secret that they plan to win at any cost over there. Mr. Isbell has done his time, has the VA schedule to prove it, and I do not want to be left on the "homefront" of a war against an abstract noun that we cannot win.)

(Besides, I'm sure Obama likes Cute Overload.)

I Don't Know...Is It Baked Or Fried?

You may have already seen this David Sedaris piece from last month's New Yorker, but it bears repeating the day before election day:

[In the final days of the campaign] the focus shifts to the undecided voters. "Who are they?" the news anchors ask. "And how might they determine the outcome of this election?"

Then you'll see this man or woman— someone, I always think, who looks very happy to be on TV. "Well, Charlie," they say, "I've gone back and forth on the issues and whatnot, but I just can't seem to make up my mind!" Some insist that there's very little difference between candidate A and candidate B. Others claim that they're with A on defense and health care but are leaning toward B when it comes to the economy.

...To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. "Can I interest you in the chicken?" she asks. "Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?"

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Happy Halloween, if you like it. I haven't been very excited for it since 1989. And it leads to to the darkest part of the year, the last downward slide to cold weather and no sun.

2. Fortunately, we can be happy that both the punctuation faces and the cats are cuter in Asia. (Well, MOST cats are cuter. Nothing is as cute as Toby!)

3. It's the birthday of John Keats, who has always reminded me of Schubert. (They lived almost at the same time and for the same span, and Keats' poems have the same otherworldy effect and quick mood changes that Schubert's later works have.)

4. That sounded scholarly, huh?

Farmer Obama

Two weeks ago I read Michael Pollan's long open letter to the next president, which presented why agriculture today is unsustainable (it's based on cheap oil, which is going away) and his ideas about how it must change.(If you'd rather just read a summary of his proposed ideas, you can go here.) Some are practicable and some will probably never happen, but, as the summary points out, "It’s one thing to rail against what is wrong; another to offer realistic solutions to the problems you decry. I’m grateful to Pollan."

While reading it, I thought, "How cool would it be if Obama read this? Maybe things would change!"

Well, he has read it:
"I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollan about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it's creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they're contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity..."

Obama: He reads and retains and cares! He is awesome.

(Mr. Isbell and I are voting early tonight. I'll bet you'll never guess for whom!)

The Post That Talks About Chestnuts And Poems

So chestnuts are dropping everywhere and I have a hard time not thinking of Mark Doty's "Grosse Fugue," about Beethoven's quartet and difficult times, when I see them. (No online text but the whole collection--Atlantis--is worth getting.)

I love this because I first read it in the fall when I was a student, full of hope and promise, just discovering chestnut trees on campus, and the thought of playing the Grosse Fugue someday wasn't completely ludicrous;* and I loved it because it talked about music--which I knew all about, of course--and because it sounded so musical itself. For example:

The music
is like lying down in that light which gleams
out of chestnuts, the glow of oiled and rubbed
mahogany, of burled walnut, bird's-eye
maple polished into incandescence:
autumn's essence of brass and resin, bronze
and apples, the evanescent's brisk smoke.

And because I promised plural poems that mention chestnuts, here's Neruda's "Ode to a Chestnut Lying on the Ground." This doesn't have the same richness of association, since I discovered it this week searching for the online text of "Grosse Fugue," but it's very charming:

From bristly foliage
you fell
complete, polished wood, gleaming mahogany,
as perfect
as a violin newly
born of the treetops,
that falling
offers its sealed-in gifts,
the hidden sweetness
that grew in secret
amid birds and leaves,
a model of form,
kin to wood and flour,
an oval instrument
that holds within it
intact delight, an edible rose.

Music metaphors again. Chestnuts must be very poetic.


*I regret not learning four things back when I could play: Schubert's Cello Quintet, all of the Bach partita in D minor (I did get some of it, though), this Beethoven fugue, and the first Brahams sonata. Although I remember telling my teacher I wanted to learn the Brahams, and getting a look that I interpreted out loud as, "I should wait until I'm fifty?" She nodded. So I suppose I can still learn it.