I married a hero.

In the US Navy, there are many awards. From the highest, the Congressional Medal of Honor (if you are awarded an MOH, the president salutes you, as does everyone else in the military), down through the Navy Cross, the Distinguished Service medals, the Silver Star, on down through the Purple Heart, the Navy Achievement Medal (known as the NAM) and on and on. I once knew a guy who had so many ribbons and medals, he kept them in a Mason jar on his desk, and would pull out three at random to wear on his uniform each day. (I believe one of those awards was the Navy Cross, so they let him get away with it.)

All the way at the end of the list, past the Good Conduct Medal (known by some as the Not Getting Caught Award), the Antarctica Service Medal, and the Expert Pistol Marksman ribbon, is the tongue-in-cheek Yellow Sticky Note Of Merit.

I'm so proud. (Actually, he's got some REAL medals and ribbons, but the Yellow Sticky Note of Merit is my favorite in terms of humor.)

Holy fucking fuck.

Over at Vintage Textile, they have an antique knitted bag up for sale. They have closeups and general measurements; between the two I am guesstimating the gauge at about twenty stitches per inch. They are selling it for ELEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS. As in A THOUSAND DOLLARS PLUS ANOTHER HUNDRED.

Why can't WE sell our stuff for prices like this??!!?? I'll even use silk, instead of that cotton. And mine wouldn't have holes or missing beads.

Hey, Scandinavian people.

Help me make my friend snarf coffee out her nose tomorrow morning!

(Snarf: verb. To laugh while drinking, causing liquid to shoot out nose, often causing damage to computer keyboards.)

As I mentioned yesterday, she's been tormenting me with quotes from the subtitles at the beginning of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I've run "also also wik" through every translating program I can think of, and nothing's coming up for any Scandinavian language I can think of. So either it's misspelled, slang, or - go figure, it's Monty Python - totally made up. But it will give me something to do other than snarf tea out my nose when an IM screen pops up that says "Including the majestik møøse".

Thank you, I will let all of you know the results. Especially if it causes property damage or antihistimine consumption.


Otherwise, uh, it's a day. I had to quit taking a bunch of my medication because it was/is causing this mouth sore, and I'm beginning to suspect part of the problem was the medication. (Gee, that never happens.) I also think that for the last five or six YEARS, what we were calling chronic pain symptoms and treating as such was really fallout from the crashing thyroid. It appears that the pain problem is almost entirely isolated to my right hand and all the rest of this shit has been because my entire endocrine system was fucked up. Anyway. Anyway. I'm kinda loopy at the moment (gee, that's new) but feeling better.

Still knitting.

I have begun recording Tank Girl on the DVR. Which should make me drive for a mainac for at least a week.

And I ate an entire batch of cookies last night. Well. The husbeast had one and the Goober had three. I ate the rest.

The Archeology Rant.

Which should have been titled "If you can't get the hell out of your Ivory Tower, could you at least talk - and listen - to someone who doesn't live up where the air is so thin it causes brain damage?" In a nutshell, I'm sick to goddamn death of archeologists ignoring both specialists in other fields AND human nature (which, being human, they should have a working knowledge of), to blow off every find that isn't immediately obvious as 'has an unknown ritual use'. Ritual use, my ass.

The first example that comes to mind, which is easily understood by knitters (or craftspeople of ANY type), is ancient toolmaking. Making tools goes back to our hominid ancestors, before we were even truly human by our current definition. (Though they sure ACTED human.) All over the world, in sites from the lowest of the lower paleolithic, up to the neolithic and even into the infomation age (where we are now), there are piles of tools. Tools that have never been used. Tools that look like they were never intended for use - either because they're too large to pick up, too small to handle easily, or just flat-out weird. What do most archeologists say? Those huge tools were 'likely made for some ritual purpose'. Know what I say, as a knitter? THEY MADE THEM FOR THE FUN OF IT. Experimentation, practice, learning, sure, but also BECAUSE THEY COULD. The typical hunter-gatherer in a reasonably fertile environment has a twenty hour work week, meaning it takes twenty hours a week to ensure you have food to eat and a roof over your head. The tools were made with stuff that could be found laying around; stone, leather, wood. So you're a craftsman fascinated by your craft, with a twenty hour work week and unlimited raw materials. What do you do? MAKE STUFF. HELLO. This seems so obvious to me that anyone claiming 'ritual purpose' should be whopped upside the head with some of those stone 'ritual' tools. When I ran this theory past the husbeast, who is also a craftsman, he had another suggestion. Those large tools? Leave 'em sitting in the front of the village, and send the message 'Hey, we've got someone big enough to USE THESE. Don't fuck with us.' Which is also an excellent point. I wouldn't call it a ritual purpose, though. More like a bluff.

How about some examples. One that really pisses me off? The Baghdad Battery.

It's a two thousand year old, middle-eastern battery. As one engineer put it, "If that's not a battery, then what is it??" Ivory tower archeology types insist that there's no way to know what it is (sure as hell looks like a battery to ME), and that it probably had, yes, some unknown ritual purpose. Mythbusters built a couple of these and used them to elecroplate stuff. Electroplating is a frigging ritual purpose?? (I love the juxtaposition in that video - two thousand year old building materials on a work bench next to a computer.) Here's an idea. If it looks like a battery and acts like a battery, MAYBE IT IS A BATTERY.

Another example that drives be batshit crazy? The Antikythera Mechanism.


It is, essentially, an ancient computer that used gears instead of silicon chips. It calculated the locations of the moon and planets; it is a miniature orrery. Among other things, it uses differential gearing (a variable gearing method) that until this discovery was not thought to have been invented until the Middle Ages. It is speculated that this was built by Archimedes himself. While I find it hard to believe he was the only Smart Guy in the ancient world, the idea of something he built with his own two hands in a museum in modern times is really cool. Anyway, what do the archeologists say? That it was used to calculate times for RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS. My ass. IT WAS FOUND IN A BLOODY SHIP WRECK. You know, those ships that used ASTRONOMICAL NAVIGATION? (Archimedes was still working on GPS.) You get the day of a festival off, who cares. You get a planet in the wrong place at sea, you wind up drowned in the Mediterranean somewhere. What would YOU use it for?

It's like they want the human race to be stupid.

Okay, one last one. Just for my own personal ranting pleasure. Cave paintings.

Why do they have to have ritual purpose?? Isn't it possible someone painted them BECAUSE THEY LIKED TO PAINT? Because they took pleasure from the act of creation? Maybe they crawled off into those caves because they wanted their work to last, and they realized painting on exposed walls or wood or leather wouldn't last? Maybe they wanted it hidden so NO ONE WOULD FUCK WITH THEIR WORK? Sure, there's evidence of lots of traffic through some of those caves. Know what? There's a lot of traffic through the National Gallery, too. Instead of assuming ritual purpose, let's find SOME EVIDENCE of ritual purpose! How's that for a thought? (To my knowledge, the majority of stone age cave paintings in Europe have no real evidence of ritual use. However, in other places in the world - China and the New World, particularly - there IS evidence of sacrifice and other ritual behavior. Maybe people painted them for DIFFERENT REASONS!)

So here's the really unpopular information that archeologists really get cranky about discussing. Most of the major discoveries in archeology weren't made by archeologists. Rosetta Stone? Found by engineers and translated by linguists. (I had an anthro prof who used to say the Rosetta Stone was the only useful thing to come from the Napoleonic Wars. I would say canned foods and emergency medicine were handy too, and he would glare at me.) Construction methods of the Great Pyramid Complex in Egypt have mostly been figured out by architects and engineers. Rediscovery of murex was done by a chemist, a zoologist, and a rabbi (sounds like the start of a great joke - a chemist, a zoologist, and a rabbi walk into a bar...) The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by a kid hearding goats or sheep (or both) and translated by linguists. Most of the Mayan math/number charts were figured out by mathematicians and/or number geeks, up to and including Dr. Richard Feynman, a winner of the Nobel Prize for physics and a guy who liked to 'figure things out' - his work on the Mayan math codices was his idea of fun (last set figured out were some charts to calculate property tax; the more things change, the more they stay the same). Bob Ballard, the guy who found the Titanic, the Yorktown, the Bismarck, and a whole crapload of other under water stuff of historic significance, is an oceanographer.

I could go on, but you get the idea. As I reflect on this, I get the urge to go bug the hell out of the Charleston Museum to let me go over their textiles collection with a magnifying glass, and get to work on that history of knitting book that the world needs so badly. Oh, and textiles 'experts' who can't knit, weave, or sew? They really piss me off. But that's a rant for another day.

Signs of the coming apocalypse.

-Quit knitting the brown shawl at round 120 because it wasn't going to be big enough and am starting over. Which means two, three weeks of lace knitting, out the window.

-Totally brainfarted yesterday and missed Talk Like A Pirate Day. Arg.

-Paulie Shore is doing voiceovers for Disney, and Brian Setzer is writing music for them.

-John McCain is being taken seriously as an advocate for the US Military after repeatedly fucking them over as a congressman for over fifteen years. (Sorry, the politics just slipped in. I've hated the SOB since 1999 when he fucked us over with a pay grade 'increase' that actually took money out of our pockets.)

-Spent yesterday trying to translate 'wik' into Scandinavian languages, due to its use in the Monty Python subtitles. A Møøse once bit my sister...

-Sekhmet has been nice.

-The Goober is throwing tantrums because she can't read. When she reads it'll be straight to tech manuals on how to build plasma generators and nuclear warheads.

-The weather is cool enough to have the windows open, and it's not December.

I'm making cookies. When the Four Horsemen show up, we'll all have tea. But Pestilence isn't allowed to touch the food.

More stuff.

Okay, after that last blog post, I did do some knitting. Finished the knitting/felting portion of the crown.

It is looking relatively foolproof, knock on wood. Lots of wood. All that's left now is some sewing, needle felting, and, yay, pattern writing. Whee ha.

Then I crawled off under my rock and made a mutant aster. (Yes. I am a plant freak. I am trying to re-create real flowers. This can't possibly shock anyone at this point.)

After that, I started on some leaves. I'm gonna make an actual floral spray sort of thing.

At the moment I've got two large leaves like the one above, a mini leaf, and two floral centers. I am now working toward several large flowers (rose-ish), and then some smaller forget-me-not flowers. No way I'll ever be able to sell this and make money. Screw it. It's physical therapy. And my desk looks like this.



Then I did some spinning, and had the husbeast shoot some video.

It's kind of cool. I actually look like I know what I'm doing.

Now if you'll excuse me, the ribbon is calling. It is saying "duuuuuude, you really need to get a grip".

The daily stuff.

Didn't knit a stitch yesterday. Was chortling with glee while I made these:


I can keep construction of single flowers like these down to an hour or so, which means selling singles will be mildly profitable (in that I will make back the cost of materials and something not quite minimum wage for my time spent). Sprays of flowers, on the other hand, are gonna cost. Though these days only hat makers will likely WANT sprays, so I'll try to keep it to single flowers or small groups...and I don't know why I'm babbling about this to YOU guys. Anyway, the physical therapy is going well and it may pay for itself.


Sekhmet is a fucker.

In case you can't tell what exactly is going on in that photo, there's a pile of toys and a couple pillows shoved under the coffee table, and Sekhmet has crawled in there and wedged herself onto one of the pillows. Because she's a cat, and she can.


The Goober is still cute.

That's a tiara and some fairy wings she's got on, there. When wearing this getup she has informed us she's a 'princess butterfly'.

Monday, after we'd seen off the in-laws on their way home, the Goob flounced back into the house, flopped on the couch, and told me "Oh, bummer." I think she had a good time.

When she's bored later today, I happened to pick up some bright pink quick-dry nail polish at the pharmacy yesterday. That should delight her.



As for the rest, well, I feel stupid even complaining about this, but remember how my one anti-inflammatory used to trigger shingles? (If not, I had three rounds of them before shifting medication.) This new medication seems to be triggering another version of the herpes virus, namely mouth sores from hell. I've had to quit taking the anti-inflammatories to get the sores to heal, can't eat, and am having to drink hot tea with a straw. Several of my Beloved Readers are dealing with true, serious, awful crap in their lives (I'm thinking of you, and worrying over you), so I feel ridiculous even mentioning it. But damn it, it hurts. I'd have some cheese with the whine, but it hurts to eat. Waaaaaah. Next up, hangnails.


THEN, last night I was messing around with my iPod (a shuffle - looooove it), and somehow, the display on my laptop got rotated 90 degrees to the left. (Meaning the 'top' of the screen was on the left side.) I sighed heavily, and the husbeast, sitting beside me, said "WHAT?" (he's had a really stressed out couple days at work). Apparently he was expecting 'my mouth hurts' or 'I'm tired' or some other usual, everyday crap. Instead, I said "Any ideas how to fix THIS?" and turned the computer sideways so he could see the display. After he got over the shock, he laughed and laughed. Bah. So glad to help with de-stressing. (Got the display fixed with relatively little fuss. Apparently there's an actual setting for that crap on the control panel.)


So all is as usual at my house - odd, out of date crafts like antique ribbon work, a psycho cat, a princess butterfly, and somehow turning my entire computer sideways. Just another day.

Gearing up for that archeology rant. I have photos.

Seven random things.

Leonie tagged me for this over at her blog, so I'll give it a whirl. I'm supposed to tag people and all that, but as usual I'm just going to say, if it sounds fun, go for it.

Most of this stuff is probably already known if you've read the blog for a while, but I'll try to come up with things suitably random and fresh.

1. As well as being an oboe player in symphonic band as a kid/young adult, for marching band, I played the tuba. I was the runt of the section, and have a chipped tooth from an attempt at tuba-twirling gone bad.

2. I am pantheist, meaning I think all religions are 'right', as are atheism and agnosticism. If it makes sense to you, it's the right belief. (Or lack thereof.) This somehow manages to offend extremists of all stripes. Oh, and I lean heavily toward Taoism, more by nature than deliberate choice.

3. When I was seven years old, I fell off a tractor onto a cement floor and broke my skull. The husbeast maintains this is the source of the 'you're not quite right' issue, though I say it goes back further than that.

4. I have a compulsive need to buy office supplies, even though these days I do not need more than the occasional pencil. So far I have resisted the scrapbooking sections at the craft store, and hope to remain strong.

5. Before I broke my hand I did calligraphy and had reasonably good drawing skills. After, I had to re-learn how to write and never took it further than all capital letter printing. I've been informed this type of hand-printing is the same type used by serial killers; pretty sure the person saying that was joking.

6. Because the husbeast works on submarines, he must have a security clearance. And because he must have the security clearance, I cannot run around the internet criticizing Certain Wars and Certain Presidents and Certain Political Systems, because in our current Certain Political Climate, he'll get his security clearance yanked and we will starve. I live for his retirement. No one will know what hit them, including my Beloved Blog Readers. (Big issues? Children's rights, gays' rights, freedom of speech, and copyright reform.)

7. With the above in mind, I consider myself a conservative, in that I think the Constitution should be either followed to the letter, or amended as the system gives provision for. However our current crop of 'conservatives' would not have me as a gift, and I'm told regularly that I'm a raving, bleeding-heart liberal. Whatever. Viva la revolution. A group of friends call me 'Che' when I get going. I'm more in line with Teddy Roosevelt, really, but Che has a nice ring to it.


There, I think that was pretty random, though I got a little political there at the end. Anyway, those wanting to join in, do so.



In other news, I don't know if I mentioned before, my mother-in-law and I went to the craft store Saturday. After I had half-filled the shopping cart (dear gods yes, a shopping cart at the craft store), we got to the cashier, and she insisted on picking up the tab for the whole mess. Including the impulse-purchase set of Crayola markers. So I figured she deserved something nice. Preferably made with some of the craft supplies. I made this.

It's sort of a mutant rose/gardenia hybrid thingie. There's a pin on the back for putting on lapels or hats. Hoping to get that part of the shop up and running sometime this week; I'm getting the hang of mass production. With this prototype, I figured costs and time spent, and these flowers are going to go for between fifteen and twenty bucks. I can't charge less and make any money. But I'll do on-request backings (pin, barette, hairpin, clip) and the prices will vary widely according to how much time they take to make. Basically, the more petals the flower has, the more time it takes.


Still knitting on the crown prototype. One more point to go, and a little extra. I've managed to work it so that there's no need for a gauge swatch and it doesn't matter how it felts, so long as it doesn't turn into a ball. I'd like to say it's idiot-proof, but I've destroyed several felted projects that seemed idiot proof at the time. But I'm doing my best.

A proud day.

No, no, this isn't about the Goober. I've gloated over her enough. (Though I did break down at the craft store today and buy her fairy wings, so more sickeningly cute photos, coming up soon.) This is about my mother-in-law.

I taught her to knit while I was pregnant, so, what, three and a half years ago. She has been an adventerous knitter, gradually working her way through different projects, learning new skills. As she puts it, she wants to learn something when she knits.

So, her latest project has been a sweater for my father-in-law. It is a cable knit. She was kind of sweating the gauge (she had been advised to WASH THE GAUGE SWITCH, so all SHOULD have been well) because the back was too narrow. I told her it would be fine because she WASHED THE SWATCH. She brought it down with her so we could wash it together, and (I'm betting) I could pour her wine if it went wrong.


Exactly the size it is supposed to be.

A fine, fine day.


Me? I'm knitting another crown, to make sure the pattern works. Then I'll be offering it for free, here and on Ravelry.

CODE RED!! WOOT WOOT WOOT!!

I was just re-reading the chocolate cupcake recipe in the "Chocolate" post and realized in the dry ingredients I had written vanilla instead of baking soda. I have corrected the recipe itself, but thought I would mention this in case anyone printed it out.

If anyone has tried this recipe already and it turned out weird, this is why. I'm really, really sorry.

It is the queen.

My in-laws have reminded me, they never had any little girls to shop for until they got hold of the Goober. This has been brought home to the nth degree tonight:

Don't miss the purple satin shoes. With sequins.

We'll be lucky to get her out of it to sleep tonight.

Surprise!

It's good to be a fiberhead.

And a pack rat. And almost good to be broke; at least it's motivating.

So. Tomorrow morning is the Goober's surprise birthday party. (The in-laws are getting in after she goes to bed tonight, I will be hanging a banner and streamers and all that stuff.) She has informed me that a proper party requires party hats. Well, long story short, I was in the middle of looking around for party hats (I'd hit three stores), when that damned almost hurricane came knocking and we spent the rest of the party budget (such as it was), on stuff like canned foods.

Not to worry, I'm also a planner as well as a cheapskate packrat, and had purchased the Goober's present in July.

So I was feeling kind of bad about her not having a party hat, because the Goob had made a huge big deal about how she needed a party hat (she'd been to a New Year's Eve party that I think permanently warped her idea of parties), and I got obsessive the way I do, and, long story short...

The crown itself is knitted and then felted (with yarn leftovers from 2004). The 'jewels' are needle-felted on with some of that bloody damned unspinnable corriedale I bought this spring and a felting needle I'd picked up on my last run through the craft store for no real reason.

Now I'm thinking I need to make another one for my nephew's dress-up box I'm putting together for his Christmas present. And thinking further... I think I'm going to put together a group of patterns, like a mini-booklet, of stuff like this to king for kids. Anyone got suggestions? I'm thinking Viking Helmet with fake braids. And I'm thinking very hard about how to felt a sword. And armor.

The in-laws should be here in about two hours. Anyone want to clean this?

Chocolate.

Warning: this started off as a few quick words about chocolate, and a recipe, and, well, it's a novel. Oh well.


Someone requested this as a food topic, a while back. I don't remember who and I'm too lazy to go through my back e-mail and find out. Sorry. But here are a few thoughts on the subject.

It should first be noted that I am a notorious cheapskate, if you've only read this blog for say fifteen seconds and hadn't noticed yet. With that in mind, it's probably an obvious conclusion that I dislike spending hordes of money on chocolate, even if it IS food of the gods. (Literally. That's what the taxonomic name means. Theobroma = gods' food.) I'm also a heretic into the bargain and prefer milk chocolate to dark. I know, I know, the dark's supposed to be all gourmet and trendy and yummy, but damn it, I like milk chocolate and that's it. Some of the lower-percentage cacao chocolates - I think of them as semi-dark - aren't bad. But that super-dark stuff with crazy amounts of cocao in them? Pass. They taste bitter. (Studies have shown there's some kind of genetic deal going on with taste buds and for some people, many chemical 'flavors' are too complex for the tongue/brain to cope with, and the brain just defaults the confusion to 'bitter'. I wonder if that happens with chocolate. The effect is best known with the brassicae - cabbage, broccoli, and related veggies.)

And did I mention I ran out of my anti-inflammatories Sunday, am still kinda screwy, and my brain's going in ten directions? Anyway.

Milk chocolate was invented in Europe. Switzerland, if I recall but it may have been Belgium or Holland. (Sorry. I refuse to look stuff up today. It's raining and the cat's driving me nuts and the Goob is being three.) The European method, without getting into gory detail, used milk to smooth out and sort of de-bitter the chocolate, and produced what we now think of as the 'really good' milk chocolate, such as Lindt, which is like the Hershey of Switzerland and my default choice for milk chocolate. Well, the first guy to get the idea of producing milk chocolate in the US was Milton Hershey. And while I sincerely admire and respect his methods of running a business and caring for his employees, his manufacturing methods, well, sucked. His method of producing the milk solids then used in milk chocolate manufacture soured the milk as part of the production. (At this time, details of European milk chocolate manufacture were considered proprietary information and damn if they were gonna share with an upstart twit from the Colonies.) That is why, to this day, American-style milk chocolate has an unidentifiable funk to it. Some sort of twang that's missing in the European-style. It's the soured milk process first used by Hershey.

Mind you, this only applies to milk chocolate. Cocoa manufacture is pretty much identical, as far as I know. Ditto for the dark chocolates. (For those, the variables are more about roasting time and what beans are used.) With all that in mind, the answer to what chocolate do I like is pretty easy: Lindt. They're awesome; affordable, easy to find, and yummy. If you're going whole-hog for eco-friendly tree-hugging low-carbon-assprint milk chocolate, Dagobah milk chocolate is very good, and not too terribly high priced, considering the manufacturing requirements. Hawaiian Chocolate Company also produces some nummy stuff (they do the entire process on the premises, from GROWING THE CHOCOLATE - very cool). All but the Hawaiian Chocolate Co are available at Chocosphere, along with eleventy million other types. I find Scharffenberger chocolate, which is getting a lot of hype here in the US, quite bland. Oh, and World Market (again if you're in the US) has a pretty extensive selection of decent imported chocolate. Don't forget the Arnott's Biscuits.

For baking, I go with plain old Hershey's cocoa powder, or Ghiardelli milk-chocolate chips (Ghiardelli's stuff is okay for straight eating, too, but kinda bland). It's useless to spend big bucks on any kind of chocolate that's going into the oven, because the heat breaks down a lot of the chemicals that contribute to the finer points of flavor. The Hershey's is easy to find here in the US, and since it's not milk chocolate, does not contain the odd twang that their milk chocolate does. I'm sure any other cocoa powder is interchangeable, except possibly Mexican cocoa powders - occasionally they add extra spices to theirs. Should be listed on the ingredients list.

And what to do with all this info? How about a recipe or three? For severe chocolate cravings, if you're willing to bake for it, make Chocolate Lava Muffins, with the Ghiardelli chocolate chips; don't try this recipe without an electric mixer. Skip the sauce. They do keep until the next day; they'll look like hockey pucks but taste JUST FINE. And do NOT eat the entire batch by yourself, you will get sick. I have tried it two or three times. Trust me. Sick. As a dog. A happy dog, but a sick dog.

Brownies are always good. Keep in mind, cocoa powder has more caffeine than regular milk chocolate chips. So if you eat a batch of these and can't sleep at night, that's why. More lessons learned the hard way.

Last, a family recipe. This recipe has been in the family for three generations, for sure. I'm reasonably sure my grandmother made these for her parents, which makes the Goober the fifth generation to eat these things. My grandmother originally made them with rendered pork lard, which not only turned them into Chinese Throwing Muffins, they were so chocolatey they'd almost take your head off (some of the flavor components in chocolate are fat-soluble, meaning if you eat them with different kinds of fats, or none at all, they will taste different; cinnamon works like this too). My mother turned her nose up at lard and used Crisco instead, which I'm not sure is any better from a health point of view and made the texture kinda funky. I've tweaked with the recipe yet again (seems to be part of the tradition - can't wait to see what the Goob does with it) and below you will find my version.


STINE FAMILY CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES.

Dry ingredients, mix together in a bowl:
-2 c flour
-2 c sugar
-pinch salt
-1 tsp baking soda

Wet ingredients one, heat together in a pot on the stove:
-1/2 c butter (or crisco, or pork lard)
-1/2 c oil (safflower is best but I've used olive and peanut)
-3 TB cocoa (good old Hersheys is traditional, use what you want)
-1 c water
I strongly suggest letting this return to room temperature before use; my mother never did, and would just throw everything together and stir. Why she never wound up with scrambled eggs or nasty gelatinized flour is beyond me. She defied the laws of physics in many ways; this is just more proof she was really a superhero.

Wet ingredients two
-2 eggs, lightly beaten
-1/2 c milk
-1 tsp vanilla extract (actual vanilla bean scrapings are wonderful, but awfully fancy for my family)
A slug of Bailey's Irish Creme is dandy, too, but I come from teetotalers, so it's another non-traditional touch.

Once everything is at room temperature, put it all together in one bowl and mix it all up. I do it by hand with a whisk - not involved enough to get the mixer dirty. The batter will be runny; I usually put it in a pitcher and pour it into the cupcake tins. I use paper liners for the cupcake tins instead of buttering, etc. Bake at 350 degrees F for about 20 minutes. They will be set, but still moist on top. I don't gauge it by moistness, but pull them out the instant the paper liners start to shrink away from the sides of the tins. Should make two dozen normal-sized cupcakes. You can ice these, but as often as not I scarf 'em down as-is. They're that good. My oil and butter substitutions have turned this into what is technically a chiffon cake, so experienced bakers, keep that in mind.

These should be made for all life-changing occasions, good or bad, in keeping with the tradition. Birthday, graduation, broken arms, chicken pox, you name it. If there was a crisis or a happy event in my family, someone was out in the kitchen making a batch of these. They got mentioned at my grandmother's funeral. We should have served them there. Grandma would have approved.

Enjoy. I think I need a cupcake.

A weekend of dumbassery.

Pretty much everything I touched this weekend turned out screwy. Not bad, particularly. But screwy.

The Baby Surprise Jacket? Remember those things I talk about all the time called gauge swatches?

Not only is it garish, it was meant for a newborn. This thing's the size of a two year old, easy. Fortunately I know a kid the right size I'll be mailing it off to. And I've got some equally garish cording to make some frogs with, for the thing. (That's my hand-dyed yarns I knit it with, if you're wondering WTF that stuff is.)


I also finished up some ribbon barettes:

They turned out all right. The dumbassery here was when I was hot-gluing the ribbon to the metal barette and had this thought - "Why in fuck is this getting hot... oh, damn, I am a moron. Ow."

Any friendly readers out there want to offer suggestions on pricing, for selling these things? These are going in the mail to some little girls, but I'll be making more. And more and more. And possibly some more dignified stuff for grownups. Like real flowers. Offered on your choice of barette, hair pin, comb, or pin as part of the cost.


In non-dumbass news (in fact the opposite), the Goob has taken great interest in my archeology and history books, and is getting into poking at photos and asking "What dat?" Today she singled out a photo of a bullae and I found myself explaining anciente Sumerian accounting to her. I can see her now, in first grade, piping up with "The Sumerians used clay pots for this crap... can't I use a calculator?"


And the husbeast just walked in the house and announced "I hate stupid people." so I bet he had as good a day as I did.

Maybe I'll go crawl under a rock and make some frogs now. Yeah. That sounds good.

More Goobie photos.

So if you're sick of the parade of cuteness, I understand. Just look away. Regular bitching will resume shortly. I've been reading anthropology books and they're pissing me off. Brace for a 'religionizing of archeology' rant, soon. Anyway.

Today we went to Target and spent Auntie's gift certificate in the Crayola aisle, as ordered.


She's already hard at work, creating new masterpieces.

Last night, we made pizzas, with whomp biscuits for crust. We did the Goob up in one of my aprons and let her help. She has, of course, decided she loves 'being cooking'.





And here's a priceless shot the husbeast got by pure luck.



Otherwise? Uh. I'm knitting quite possibly the most garish BSJ in the history of the world.

Took that a couple days ago; it's almost done by now. The Goob loves the colors and keeps asking when I'm knitting something for her, so that may be up next.

Christmas knitting? Huh? I don't know what you mean. (I had this really subversive thought the other day, that if I'd quit being nice and knitting gifts for god and everybody, I would have time to do more design work. I must quit being nice. Someone let me know how to do that.)

Plus I'm getting out the non-USB glue gun this afternoon, to finish up some ribbon projects. Fear the glue gun.

Three.

Today is the Goober's birthday.

We won't be celebrating it until later in the week when the in-laws can get here.

But I can't help but sit here and marvel at the bundle of happiness that is my daughter, and wonder what I did for laughs before she was born.

Happy birthday, Goobie, and thanks for another wonderful year.

Let's try something a bit more positive.

Or at least funny. Several good friends and/or crazy people have e-mailed me a link to one of the funniest history sites I have ever had the pleasure to clap eyes on. I should probably warn about foul language, but if you hang around here for more than five minutes you can handle it. Besides, it's FUNNY foul language, which is a whole other situation than just swearing for no reason. Anyway. Some of the funnier bits:

-Australia
-Chesty Puller One of the craziest mofos to ever serve in the US military and made Douglas MacArthur look like a prancing nancy boy.
-The A-10 Warthog It's a war plane - this one made the husbeast laugh so hard he cried.
-Several Asian martial arts legends, including Jomyo Meishu of Tsutsui and the First Emperor. The article on Meishu is the one that made ME laugh until I cried.


I wanna be Ching Shih when I grow up. But I'll raid the E Coast of N America instead of China.

Bah.

Not a whole lot to say. I'm watching more hurricanes form in the Atlantic (Ike is the real worry; Hannah looks like a disorganized floozy). Started a BSJ for one of the fifty million women I know who are pregnant (okay, maybe not that many, but it seems like it. Those of you out there who are pregnant, you can wonder if I mean you). The space bar on my laptop is fucking up or else my left thumb is - I'm hoping it's the space bar. I've got a migraine. Politics is giving my heart burn and I'm sick to death of watching lame, stupid, unethical dumbasses get nominated for public offices.

I think that's about it for bitching today. I think I'm going to go knit so I don't kill someone.

Swatching lace medallions.

I've seen/read a few comments about swatching for these things, and, well, thought I'd give a quick tip and say, it doesn't work.

As everyone around here probably knows, I am a great fan of swatching. I do it for fun. But when it comes to lace, especially lace where there are four or five kinds of stitches going on at once (as opposed to a simple shawl that uses the same lace pattern through the whole thing), well, it doesn't work. There's too much variation in blocking, stretch of different stitch patterns, stretch of the same patterns used in different places, blah blah blah.

Best thing to do? Take notes and knit a lot of lace medallions. Lucky for you I've already done that.

Let's take a walk down memory lane.

Back in the day, I was a crazy-ass documenter of everything, and after I knit a doily or two, I thought "I should be writing this down." so I got a notebook, and did. It's this one. In case you can't read my writing, the date on the front cover is March 18, 1986 (in cursive! I never re-learned how to write in cursive after I broke my hand. Truly a historical document). For the first ten, fifteen years I knit, I documented all my lace projects in here, xeroxing the patterns and gluing them in and writing notes to myself all over them. See?


I even kept track of how long some of them took to knit, in case of emergency gift knitting.

Nowadays my pattern collection has outstripped my little book, but I still use it to go back and remember what I knit for whom, in what color. (Yes, I wrote all that down too.) And it works well as a general basis for gauge, if you write down how big all your doilies and shawls are when you finish them.

The last thing I knit in my Early Doily Phase was this:

As you can see, I wrote down that on size two needles, it blocked to forty inches in diameter. Knowing that, I have cast on this brown shawl I am knitting with size threes; the number of rounds in both doilies is the same (or near enough), so with a slightly larger size needle, I should get a slightly larger medallion. Which is what I want. Added to that, animal fibers stretch more on blocking than cotton - meaning the new shawl will be larger. And openwork fabrics with lots of eyelets tend to stretch more than solidly knit fabrics - meaning the new shawl will be larger than the old 'swatch' doily.

These days, with the joy of Ravelry, you can look on line and see approximately what size you'll get with a certain pattern and certain needles. But here are some general guidelines:

-It's a circle or square. Even if it's for a shawl, an inch either way isn't going to make a difference when it comes to fit, so relax a little, already.

-Save weird shapes like hexagons and ovals for a later project if this is your first try.

-Animal fibers relax more and stretch and drape more than plant fibers.

-Openwork fabric stretches more and becomes larger than an equal number of stitches knit in stockinette. Any kind of crossed-stitch pattern sucks in, is very firm, and will eat yarn (meaning use up a lot of yarn, FAST).

-On size two needles, you will use up six hundred yards of thread at approximately round 110, and a thousand yards of thread at approximately round 145. (You can obviously adjust up or down from this figure.)

-To state the obvious, each round gets longer as you knit outward. At about round 110, you will have about a thousand stitches on the needle. Each round uses progressively more time and thread to knit.

-Again for size two needles, a 45 round doily will block to twelve inches in diameter. A 90 round doily will block to twenty-four inches in diameter. A 160 round doily will block to three and a half feet in diameter. Approximately.

-On quad-zero needles, a 90 round doily will block to twelve inches.

All this is approximate, but it gives you SOME idea what will happen, when you cast on. So there you are. Toddle off and cast on something fun, kids. And those of you who knit socks, these are the same damn thing. Really. Just with more holes on purpose, and they lay flat when you're done.

(There's a great free doily pattern here that would make a fine test subject; it is both charted and written out. And a great wad of knitted doily patterns for free, here, originally from American Thread Company. Think free Lion-Brand patterns to sell yarn, but older and classier. And no fun fur.)

...and the stuff I forgot.

-found some Dulce du Leche in a can at the grocery store tonight. It's from Nestle, in the same section as the sweetened condensed milk. I did not grab it, yell "SCORE!" and do a geek dance in the middle of the store, but it was a close thing. If/when I find the perfect cake recipe for it, I will post it.

-tropical storm Hannah is due to hit my house Friday or Saturday. It's supposed to be a hurricane by then. I'm twenty miles inland, so the only real worry here is flooding, unless the storm hits category three or higher. Considering the monsoons I've seen in Hawaii, I'm rather 'eh' about the entire thing, but the entire city has gone insane. Like it's the first hurricane that ever hit here. Oy. Anyway, we may be without power (and therefore internet access) for a day or two. Don't spaz on my behalf unless the eye of a hurricane makes a direct hit on the mouth of the Ashley River at high tide. (Which is highly unlikely.)

-Sekhmet got the idea that the barf bag (the official name, I think) was a new bed because I picked her up while she was asleep and curled in a ball, and popped her into the bowl/bag/bed. She kinda snuffed once or twice and went back to sleep. Now she crawls in on her own, so I guess she likes it.

-my kid is cute.

But we knew that. (Those eyebrows? They're known as 'Stimpy eyebrows'. She inherited them from her father.)

Details.

Some folks wanted to know exactly how I knit this and what pattern I used (they have soon-to-be-lucky cats, I suspect). I showed the photos to the friend I was knitting the bag for. When she got done laughing, she said that off-white would probably have gotten dirty too fast for her, anyway. And is all right with the, ah, slight delay for another bag.

It is supposed to be the medium-sized Shigra Bag from "Folk Bags" by Viki Square. I knit it with Reynolds Lopi (regular, not the lite) and felted the living hell out of it. Obviously. Size ten needles. I guess since it's getting actual use, I'll list it over at Ravelry like a real project.

For those seriously looking to knit felted cat beds, there's a pattern available for free over at Wendy Knits called the Kitty Pi, based on EZ's pi shawl. Check out the Flickr gallery (link on the pattern page). It's a very popular pattern. I'm sure it's available through Ravelry, too.

Last night, Sekhmet fell asleep in her new kitty nest something like this:

As she fell deeply asleep, she went boneless the way cats do. Her nose slipped out of the bed and her head hit the floor with an audible thud. She didn't wake up.

Then I laughed snot out my nose.

I guess it wasn't a total waste of effort.

A great, oozing puddle of suck.

In my great drive to finish some things, over the last couple days I finished knitting a bucket bag I've been working on, and chucked it in the washing machine to felt. I didn't quite like how it turned out, so I put it through the cycle again.

With luck, - and a serious shave - this might be salvaged and turned into a cat bed.

But mostly? I think it's trash. Or possibly llama vomit. Or, I don't know, a hair ball from a tiger. A small, eviscerated sheep dog?

Why do I keep trying to felt things?

I really want a martini.