Annie Knits

I Feel Affirmed and Empowered.

This morning's Wall Street Journal article, "The Guilty Secret to Giving the Best Gifts" is an interesting one.  

In it, the author ponders this question: What makes a good gift?  An idea I've often pondered myself. 

Sometimes I give things I like in hopes that the recipient will enjoy them as well.   This works if the recipient is crafty or a foodie or a reader.   Sometimes I give hand-made items -- a gift of myself, so to speak.  This works if the recipient likes hand knits... For our family gift exchange, I have been given a list of very specific items that the recipient would like -- something I don't find particularly satisfying but the giftee always gets exactly what he or she wants this way.  

The author of the article quotes several behavioral economics journal articles (I didn't know there was such a thing) which examine a guilt-centric approach to successful gift-giving.  In a nutshell, the articles discuss the idea that alleviating the guilt of the receiver -- guilt at self indulgence most often -- is the secret of a good gift.  Get 'em something they wouldn't buy themselves.  

He says this can be something extravagant, but more successfully the gift wouldn't be overly expensive, just something the person would decide not to buy him or herself.  Like a funky jacket when the giftee already has several perfectly good coats. Or a decorative item with a specific theme.  Or a particularly useful item, the use for which might be accomplished with something less ... well, specific.  

The author also says that disconnecting the consumption of an item with paying for it is another aspect of a good gift.  You know, the joy of eating expensive chocolate that's been a gift -- gosh this is so good and I really don't have to think about the fact that it costs $6 for four caramels.  Same goes for expensive coffee -- which you know I love.  That's the beauty of a Starbucks gift card, of course.  My $4.65 Venti-peppermint-mocha-non-fat-no-whip tastes a lot better when that window guy can slide a card rather take a $5 bill and give me back pennies and a quarter...

This article speaks to me for this reason:  I sent this link to my husband and this link to my in-laws when they asked what I wanted for Christmas.  

Right on!

*Cricket Noises*

My life is sucking the life out of me.

Right now I'm thankful for:

• Hallelujah Chorus flash mobs.    

Since Father John said I'm not to be thankful for my health or my happiness (actually an excellent homily on Thanksgiving morning -- again, I say, we're lucky to have this guy) I'm thankful for the things that contribute to those things (which I do have, thankyouverymuch...)   

  

Like this spinning group meet-up at the shop.  We spun.  We carded.  We ate cookies.  What a great afternoon.

On Thanksgiving proper, Dear Daughter and I spent the morning with our Parish family making Thanksgiving dinners for our elderly and shut-in parishioners.  That's always a party.  Dear Son and Hubster helped deliver the dinners.

That afternoon, after eating Thanksgiving dinner out for the first time in my life (the food was fine -- made better, of course, by the fact that I didn't have to cook it all nor did I clean up after the meal), I got to sit in my in-laws' family room and knit.  All afternoon.

To whit.  Yay me.  (Vogue Knitting, #11 Eyelet Cowl, Hello Yarn fiber, 4.2 ounces.)  

I hope your Thanksgiving was lovely too.

Oh, Have a Cowl!

I've got several.  

Actually, I blogged today on the shop's blog about cowls.  Or circular scarves.  They. Are. Everywhere.  Every catalog I open has some twiggy model's head getting swallowed up by some or several huge circular scarves.  It's crazy, I tell you!

Ol' Blood and Guts helped me model.  He's not a particularly emotive model.  

Remember, it's Sweetgum out of some old Noro discontinued stuff?  Love it.

In fact, I'm wearing this huge thing in my house right now, because it is 43 degrees and cruddy outside and it makes me feel better to wear a giant cowl.  

I finished this cowl for Jeanna, my trainer, this morning.  She bought the yarn while she was on a trip out west and got me a skein too, so I knit her a quick cowl.

Gosh, he looks like he likes this one even less...  It's Greyhaven, a free pattern on Ravelry.  Smaller, but about the same amount of time to knit it.  

So 2 cowls in a week and some super stealth holiday knitting.  After the holiday knitting, I'm deciding which giant cowl to make out of this yarn...

Remember?  Hello Yarn club fiber, Burrows, 8 ounces, 457 yards?  A cowl out of this will swallow my head right up!  

Both Barrels.

That's what I'm gonna hit you with this afternoon.  I'm a little over caffeinated.

Why is it a feather in the cap of the Missouri legislature that we pay, per capita, some of the lowest taxes in the country?  We rank in the bottom 10 states for every kind of tax collected except for individual income tax in which we rank 27th?  Crowing about tax cuts and the low level of taxation of a common pastime in Jefferson City and I'd like to know what they're so dang proud of.  

Is it that we rank 37th among the 50 states in our investment/funding per capita in local elementary and secondary education?  

Is that that we rank 45th in local investment in higher education?  

Maybe it's that 44th place ranking in the funding, state and local, of Corrections.  

To be against taxation is one thing, but ladies and gentlemen?  What are you for?  Because the giant slash to the funding of the Parents as Teachers program boggles me.  It's that first line of defense for families and kids in crisis... it was the one thing that Missouri was doing right for it's kids.  That free, in-home assessment of babies and toddlers is an invaluable tool for regular parents like me and a godsend for families and children in crisis.

With other cuts to education and to the funding of special education for children with Autism in this state, it looks like Missourians care more about unborn children than those who have been born.  

Every state in the union is struggling with budget issues during this economic downturn.  Our response to this fight has been to cut services to the elderly, the indigent, and the young.  Modernizing our tax structures (the last time we adjusted tax brackets was in 1931!), collecting taxes on internet purchases (gasp... that one would hit me right in the solar plexus let me tell you) and collecting taxes that most other states collect ( we are among only 6 states that allow the deduction of Federal tax from our State income tax) would be a start in dragging our state back up to at least 30th in services.  How about that?  Worse that 60 percent of the country but better than 40 percent?  

Being against taxes is fine, as long as you're also for something.

**le sigh**

I spin, you know.  

 

460 yards of Rambouillet, 8 ounces, Hello Yarn, Burrow colorway (club fiber for October?).  I read about Rambouillet and that the breed is a derivative of the Spanish Merino, imported from Spain to France in the late 1700's.  It's soft and springy and MUCH easier to spin evenly than it's cousin.  Whereas I've sworn off Merino except in blends (ahem * Merino yak blend next on the wheel  * ahem), I'll spin Rambouillet 'til the wethers come home, so to speak.  Me likey.

Oh, and it's Fall.

This is the Sweet Gum tree outside my kitchen window.  Bridget noticed it the other day and I had to photograph it in the waning light today.  Yeah, waning light being like 4:07 p.m.  It's Fall.  Pretty, though, huh.

Smile!

Yesterday afternoon, Dear Son let me take this picture with my iPhone.  This is the one and only image he allowed.  

By the time we'd gotten home?  The braces hurt and he was crabby.  Can't say as how I blame him.  I hated my braces.  Maybe I didn't hate them, but I sure ignored them with a passion.  I ate the wrong stuff, I got gum stuck in my retainer, I took my head gear off in the night because it hurt.  That kind of thing.  You didn't give kids pain killer much in those days -- the 70's -- and I guess I just powered through it.  

My orthodontist was at the end of his time in practice.  I had bands of whatever metal that was around all my teeth.  He pushed the bands on, after painting some glue on the insides of them, with some kind of wooden stick thing which he also used to burnish the bands to my teeth.  Really.  Sometimes he'd slip and I'd have a gash in my gums.  His assistant was an older lady as well and she had lost one of her legs to a disease (I was afraid to ask which one).  I'm not casting aspersions on one legged people, but this gal was intimidating with all her stomping and scowling.  

Dear Son's experience will be very different from mine.  First of all, this practice is some kind of well oiled machine with the kids signing in on a computer, brushing their teeth, and slipping into one of like six chairs in the back of the office.  The orthodontist works his way back and forth across the room.  It was kind of intense once 3:30 rolled around.  With his braces, Dear Son received a t-shirt (it's got Under Construction and a giant mouth with people working on it -- I don't guess he'll wear it) and a pack full of flossers and brushes and gadgets.  He gets to choose colored bands each visit to hold the braces to the wires.  

The fact that braces are painful hasn't changed though.  Poor guy.  I have to say, though, that if he suffered more gracefully, I'd be less sarcastic with him...  Mean Mom.  This morning, he complained about the shirt he was wearing (who chose it?) and I told him that no one would even notice the shirt, that they'd all be too busy looking at his braces.  He told me I was the most annoying mom anyone ever had.  Yay me.  ; )

For dinner last night, I fixed his favorite pasta, and I made it extra soft -- I'm not so horrible after all -- Clean Out The Refrigerator Pasta.  It's his comfort food.

1. Start pasta water to boil, salt it generously.  Start 15 or so frozen meatballs to saute in 3 T of water.
2. To meatballs add:  garlic (fresh or powder); onion (fresh or powdered); about 2 cups of tomato -- I used a bunch of grape tomatoes, whole, and three chopped heirloom tomatoes; about 3 cups of vegetables from your crisper -- I used 2 peppers, chopped; 2 small eggplants, cubed; a handful of pea shoots; a chopped pattypan summer squash.  I also used up the last of the wine Emilie brought me from France -- a Gewürztraminer -- about a cup.  Let all of this cook down so you have a chunky sauce with meatballs.  It takes about the amount of time that the pasta water takes to boil.
3. When pasta water boils, add pasta to it and cook it longer than normal for the poor guy with new braces.  While the pasta cooks, add something sharp tasting to the sauce -- I didn't have any Kalamata olives so I used capers.  About 3 T.  Also, the sauce was getting dry, so I added several splashes of beef stock (because of the meatballs -- otherwise it would have been chicken stock).  Oh, and a splash of olive oil at this point to make it glossy and a little richer.  In restaurants, they'd add a stick of butter at this point to accomplish the same... olive oil is better for you.
4. This kind of sauce should have the pasta tossed in and sauteed with it to soak up the juice -- it's not that thick.  So do that.  
5. Top it with a good grated fresh sharp cheese and serve.  Of course, all I had was the stuff in the green can so we used that.  The family probably prefers that to me hovering over their shoulders grating cheese into their food.  Only husband doesn't complain about that, but I suspect that's just because he's been enough in the world to know where his bread's buttered...

Dear Son ate two bowls of the stuff and bowl of ice cream.  Then he shut himself in the bathroom to clean it all from beneath the wires of his braces.  Poor guy.  

The projected treatment time frame is 24 to 30 months.  Poor guy.

FO Fest

Heirloom ...

get it?  

Particulars:  Citron, US size 6 needles, Hello Yarn handspun Wensleydale Heirloom colorway.  Love the idea of it, but it's probably too small and there was not way I was going to complete one more row of that last ruffle (like 800 stitches).  It's more of a kerchief.  It will look great tucked into a jacket I got last year.

Next up ...

A simple K2tog, Yarn over scarf.  Manos del Uruguay yarn acquired at a local, soon-to-be-closed LYS.  2 skeins, alternating rows.  US size 9 needles.  

I hate to see yarn shops fold.  Word is that this gal, who just had a baby, just wants to do family full time.  More power to her.

Do you see my McCoy pottery turtle/sink scrubby and drain plug holder?  I kind of love him.  

Finally, ...

The Sweetgum cowl out of 6 skeins of Noro Kabuto.  This thing is ginormous, but a quick knit on US size 13 needles.  It fits down around my shoulders and extends from my elbows to my chin.  Like I said, Ginormous.  And warm.  I think it's a good first lace, first knit in the round project.  I plan to recommend it at the shop.

Ok.  Neckware for this winter covered.  Sheesh.  

As an aside.  Getting colors to look right to me on my monitor is taking up a lot of my time.  Each picture in this trio has been treated differently.  The tomatoes took a lot of futzing in a photo program to read true to me.  The photo of the scarf using a flash looked right.  The photo of the cowl without a flash read right to me.  Neither of the last two photos got retouched at all.  It's likely about the color of the piece since all were taken in the same spot within minutes of each other.  Just a rumination.  

(Is that the same thing as cud chewing?  Aren't they both somehow related to ruminants... do ruminants ruminate whilst cud chewing?  Is that the genesis of the term?  Food for thought.)

edited to add:  I looked it up.  Ruminations can be both cud chewing and thinking something over.  I wonder why.

Ten on Tuesday: Ten Dream Vacations

I have dream vacations that seem very out of reach right now.  Not necessarily for money reasons, as we spend our money on vacations rather than some other things, but because of my hip and ITband problems of late.  I'm working on the health stuff, though, so I'll indulge.

Ten Dream Vacations.

1. Several weeks touring France.  Although I've had the recent lowering experience of having my school room French thrown back in my face (not really, but it was definitely snickered at), I still want to spend time in the north of France.  I'd like to see the WWII sites I've studied.  I'd like to spend time at the chateaux in the Loire valley.  I'd like to see Paris.  Duh.
2. A Mediterranean Cruise.  This Mediterranean cruise.  I'm fascinated by that part of the world, and what better way to see some of it and unpack only once.  Of course, for this vacation for the four of us, you could buy a house in Innsbrook.  
3. Own a house in Innsbrook.  I love lake houses.  I don't mind the extra work that a house in Innsbrook would entail.  It would be fun, I think, to have a house an hour away, on a lake, to just visit when we wanted to get away.  
4. Of course, we take our dream vacation every other year when we rent a house at Kiawah Island.  You've heard enough about that, now haven't you? 
5. I loved the vacation we took several years ago when we rented an RV and toured the Rockies and the Black Hills.  Husband hated this vacation with a passion.  It was the black water, I think, that did it (if you don't know what black water is, google it, but not durning lunch).  I poke at him once in awhile, wondering if we might rent some ginormous thing and tour the Southwest.  He snorts.  I would like it, though.  It's the unpacking and repacking thing again.  Perhaps I was a turtle in another life and carried my home with me...
6. I'd like to see Ireland and Scotland some time.  I think it's all the bodice rippers I've spent time with lately.  And I love brogues.  
7. Speaking of book-inspired vacations.  The Historian made me want to visit the Carpathian mountains too.  Such an ancient place and so much lore.  I love lore. 
8. I like theme parks just fine too.  The kids love vacations to Universal, Disney, etc.  I guess that's on the list, although we've done most of the big ones in the states. 
9. Northern Europe -- Norway, Sweden, Denmark.  It's my heritage and I love the Steig Larsson books.  Plus, there's wool in them thar hills.  
10. Finally, I think I'd like to see the central part of China.  The wall.  The terra cotta warriors.  Not the western, most crowded part necessarily, but the country side.  The Yellow River valley.  The culture there dates back to 4000 B.C.  

Now, what did I miss?

Vacations I don't dream about:

1. An Alaskan cruise.  I know.  Everyone loves them.  I'm not that interested in a "cold" cruise.  Convince me.
2. A week at a dude ranch.  I love horses.  I like ranches.  I don't really want to get dusty and work very hard on a vacation, though.  Maybe I'd like it if my kids were jonesing for it.
3. White water rafting.  Too scary?  Too much work?  I don't know.  Just doesn't appeal to me.  Neither do zip lines.
4. Egypt.  Husband has talked me out of it for now, although it's on my bucket list, so to speak.  Too much upheaval and difficulty traveling outside of a very controlled tour right now.  I guess he should know.   Same for Northern Africa and the Middle East, although all three are destinations I'd consider under other circumstances.

A Few Monday Things

So, there are a few things I need to talk to someone about.  You are nominated.

1.  I took dear son to the book store to acquire the new Riordan (The Lightning Thief series author) book last night -- I can't resist it when my kids ask for books.  When he got home with his book and opened it up, out dropped a hall pass from a local high school.  The only way I can imagine that it got in there is if someone bought the book, read it (at school) and returned it to the store.  For shame.  

That just puts my intellectual property panties in a bunch, you know?  You want a new book badly enough to read it?  Then own it.  Pay for it or wait for a copy to come available at the library.  Now, Dear Son's got a second hand book for which we paid full price -- tho I have to admit, whoever bogarted this book did keep it in pristine condition.  Still...

2.  There is a local hullabaloo brewing concerning Dear Daughter's high school.  The Sisters of the Most Precious Blood of O'Fallon MO founded her school 127 some odd years ago in this neighborhood and have run a school for girls there ever since.  Now, with out any novices for several years with a median age in the 70's, their numbers are dwindling.  They are looking for a viable way to keep the school and their commitment to our city alive while their order fades into the past.  And I'm thankful for that.  

They are running a capital campaign the first phase of which provides an endowment for future scholarships for girls in need and renovation for the current main building, built in 1957.  That phase is for like 7 million dollars, of which we've raised like 1.5 million.   The second phase calls for razing a 127 year old building and replacing it with a more useful facility.  These gals have used their best practice and decided that this is a course they'd like to pursue in the future.  Neighborhood nay-sayers have come out against the project, specifically the plan to raze this 127 year old building.  In a nutshell, I say that no building is worth losing the education of even one girl.  

I'm angry at their attempts to stick a spoke in this effort to keep this school here in our neighborhood.  The naysayers, to my knowledge, don't have and have never had children attend this school.  And they'd be the first in line to bitch and moan if the property were to become blighted in the end because the sisters ran out of money to run the school at all...

3.  Finally, the Wall Street Journal today ran an article about Walmart and Target and their toy pricing for the holidays.  Apparently, Target had been able to undercut Walmart's prices on some toys, so Walmart has reduced prices to just beneath Target's to induce Holiday shoppers to come to Walmart for these deals, and perhaps shop for other things as well.  

All I have to say is that $1.44 on a Recording Studio Barbie is not nearly enough savings to induce me to change from Target to Walmart. Not even in the ball park.  I have a Walmart prejudice.  So sue me.  

Two FO's today.  No pictures because it gets dark just after lunchtime now and the light was terrible.  One is a cowl which I cast on for on Wednesday.  One was a scarf I started a year ago and it just needed ends woven in.  I'm putting both in my win column, no matter the knitting time frame.

How Do You Get a Hankie to Dance?

Oh, you know the answer to that one...

Plus, I'm talking about silk hankies, not the other kind.  For the uninitiated, silk hankies are square shaped pure silk that you spin -- dyed or undyed.  These came yesterday, Wooliebullie on etsy is my source.  They are the exact colors outside my window, so they must be spun.

I watched a YouTube video of a guy making these.  He takes a silk worm cocoon, soaks it, and ploomps the worm out like an olive pit -- gross.  Then he takes the cocoon and stretches it out over a square frame, just 4 nails really, and after 10 or so, voila.  A silk hankie.  

See the layers?  You tease each hankie from the stack ... 

and you end up with a diaphanous square of very sticky silk.  Well, not sticky precisely, but with dry hands?Each filament grabs you and the things are devilish hard to put down!

Next, you poke a hole in the center of the hankie, and pull the thing into an oval.  Keep pulling.  Pull some more.

After some more pulling and then some drafting, you end up with this.  A long oval of drafted silk.  This drafted piece will spin up to be about the size of crochet thread.  Very thin.  Silk compacts as you spin it.

What will I do with it?  Heck, I don't know.  It would be nice plyed with some soft wool or just alone knit into something lacy.  

This is process spinning, not intentional spinning...

Oh, ok.  You put a little boogie in it.

Crawling Out from Under My Rock

Since the last Presidential election, I've lived under a rock newswise.  I consumed broadcast or print news only on the advice of someone else.  I'd gotten my fill of cruddy reporting on icky political figures and non news local news.

Time to cut it out and become informed again.  This election has done it.

A multi-millionaire conservative who lives in my city bankrolled a statewide Proposition that promoted the removal of the 1% city earnings tax here in our city.  Actually, Kansas City was also included, so Missouri Urban areas.  You can imagine how it shook out.  Rural vs. Urban.  Republican vs. Democrat.  

Proponents wanted a vote every 5 years on whether we should have an earnings tax.  This tax provides roughly 31% of our city budget.  Police.  Fire.  Streets.  Inspections.   Which third would you like to do without?

It succeeded of course, because this man spent millions of his own dollars promoting his proposition outstate... Tell me what people who live in Rolla have to do with whether the City of St. Louis charges an earnings tax.  And of course, it's a TAX.  Everyone hates those.

So in April, we'll have to fight this fight again.  Proponents will say that the city need only trim unimportant (read Democratic) spending to trim its budget to fit within the new protocol.  

N'k.  Again, I ask, which third would you like to do without?  That third that is the nearest first responder to your husband's heart attack?  Oh, that third that is the nearest fire house to your house that is BURNING DOWN?!  No, wait, I know, that detective tasked with finding who is tearing apart the window coverings on the nearby vacant building so that a bad guy could drag someone's kid in there -- yeah, that detective is expendable.  Maybe it's the city inspector in charge of asbestos inspections or who helps neighbors rid themselves of problem properties.  Wait, I know, it's the guys who fill in the potholes.  We can do without them 'cause city folks will know not to drive where the potholes get big and only folks not from here will get flat tires.  Perfect.

Hey, I can be just as much a fear monger as the next guy.  I love invoking worst case scenarios to prove my points!

Let's just get the money from an increased sale's tax.  Stick it to the tourists, right?  Oh, wait... that sticks it to the small business owners as well because why would tourist shop in a place with high sales tax that's just a few miles from some place with a lower tax.  And conservatives supposedly like small business owners, don't they?  Hmm.  Maybe they only like small business owners who own businesses outside of the City of St. Louis.  That must be it.

Bridgett peeled back the layers for me today while we drank coffee.  It's the people who approach the world from a position of distrust and fear against those of us who face the world generally (not stupidly) with trust and openness.

Next thing, it'll be a bill for the ambulance and fire truck when you are in an accident in the City of St. Louis, but you are not a resident thereof.  Don't be surprised.  It's the case in several cities in Texas where earnings taxes are against the law.  The law of unintended consequences is a law too after all.