It’s Furious Balancing

That’s the name of the pattern. Really. It’s from Sheep in the City. I took about a dozen pictures standing by the window in my study on my day off, using flash suppression, hoping to show the colors in this beautiful yarn. I think the picture turned out pretty well.

The scarf is about 60 inches long (including the fringe) and about 4 1/2 inches wide. I could have made it a tad longer, but I was worried about running out of yarn and wanted to have plenty left over for the fringe.

And I’m firmly planted inside the house with the air conditioning set at 75 degrees, thankyouverymuch. I turned it lower a while back when I was steam blocking the Malabrigo scarf up in the cats’ room.

So, one thing off the list of things to do. Additional items include:

• Unbox, catalog and shelf the sexuality and erotica books currently packed up in a cardboard box in my study.

• Work on my tradeskilling in Vanguard.I did manage to ding level 21 carpenter, but I need to grind to an artisan faction of 500 to get the continental quests for panels for houses and ships.

• Maybe, just maybe, do the remaining seams on the Noro sweater. I put in the second sleeve this weekend, and I’ve got to do the side and arm seams. Then, I need to try to rework the visible neck seams. Then, I get to block that project before I start another one. I’m itching to get my hands on the dark blue yarn I bought last month (no pun intended; it’s 75% acrylic/25% wool). It’s going to be a boxy turtleneck with drop sleeves (not set in sleeves). There’s a big difference if you’re a beginning knitter.

I can’t get my pictures of the blocked scarf to come out properly. It is a real pain to get the colors to look true, especially reds, unless you photograph in sunlight (and we all know how likely that is to happen). /cough

So, sorry, no scarf pictures today! Here’s a LOLcat instead.

LOLcat courtesy of ICanHasCheezburger.com

I actually feel kind of attacked by the sun. I feel like it’s piercing into me, and I start to feel more and more desperate to escape it…. By August, I’m barely able to function and don’t really recover until autumn. October is reliably a good month. I’m waking up, and I feel like I’m being released from my summer, what I would call, jail cell. — A sufferer of Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder, New York Times

I hate summer. I’ve hated summer for years, but recently it’s become quite worse. Just walking the half block from the coffee shop to work — with the morning sun full in my face — is nearly intolerable. It’s not that I can get a second-degree sunburn in 30 minutes (I can). It’s not that the heat and humidity are oppressive (They are). It’s the light. I am truly sick of the light. On that short walk to the office this morning, the temperature was in the 60′s and still the light felt like it was gouging holes in me.

I’ve been contemplating this post for a while now, ever since I saw the Alaskan pictures over on Yarn Harlot’s blog. Land of the midnight sun and all that. It got me thinking: If there’s a place where there’s 20+ hours of daylight right now, there has to be a place where there’s 20+ hours of non-light, be it twilight, dusk, or total darkness.

Sign me up.

I’m certain it’s not “true” seasonal affective disorder, since I’ve shown the ability to be depressed at any time of year regardless of the amount of visible light, and I’m certainly not exhibiting any weight loss or decreased appetite (quite the opposite, in fact). Insomnia? Yes, but that’s nothing new. Agitation? Anxiety? No more than usual. Seeing the morning light start to come in at 5:30 a.m. and thinking “&^%#*, I woke up again“? Oh, yes.

I’m taking a day off from work on Monday for a Mental Health Day. This involves staying inside with the air on full blast and cataloging my books on my online database. If it would be cloudy and raining on that day, that would be heaven, but it appears that we’re due for yet another sunny day with highs in the low- to mid-90′s.

What I wouldn’t give for a polar night.

I have always prided myself on having a special talent — I can pill a cat on the first try.

If there are any other cat owners out there reading this, I’m sure they’re nodding their heads and saying to themselves, “My, what skill; I wish I could do that.”

It seems as though I’ve lost my special touch. Gregor needs to take a month’s worth of nutritional support-type pills to help repair some liver enzyme elevation in his latest bloodwork. Yeah, I had to read that sentence over twice myself. The upshot is that he had some elevated liver enzyme (ALT) in his last blood test. We don’t know what causes this, but it’s indicative that his liver is trying to repair itself from being damaged in some way. He could have had overexposure to a cleaning product (unlikely in my house) or this could be real honest-to-goodness liver damage. In any event, he looks and behaves as he always has, and I’m supposed to give him a Denamarin pill each day.

These are hard, coated, blue pills about half the size of an M&M, and I’ll be damned if that cat didn’t spit it out three times yesterday.

I’ve always said that the secret to effective cat pilling is to grab the cat without reservation, putting him between your knees and squatting behind him to prevent his squirming away. Grasp cat firmly. Show no fear or hesitation. Open mouth and place pill on the fold of the cat’s tongue, towards the back. Hold the cat’s mouth shut and stroke his throat to encourage swallowing. After a moment, release cat.

I did this twice yesterday, and I swear the little bugger kept it in his mouth for 30 seconds (if not longer) while he waited for me to release him so he could go into the next room to spit it out. On my third and final attempt, after he fled the scene, I did hear the thin clicky-clatter of a pill hitting the hardwood floor.

I think it rolled under my bookcases.

Damn feline.

She sent for one of those squat, plump little cakes called “petites madeleines,” which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell. — Marcel Proust, Combray, Swann’s Way, In Search of Lost Time (vol. 1)

I feel myself slipping back into the need to re-read Proust. Time Regained arrived in yesterday’s mail (thank you amazon.com.uk!); but I’m due for a blog post, so it’s time for the madeleine recipe.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 3 large eggs, at room temperature
• 2/3 cup granulated white sugar
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Utensils, pans, etc. :

• Madeleine pan
• KitchenAid-type stand mixer (preferred) or hand-held mixer
• Wire whisk
• Large rubber spatula

First, melt the butter and allow it to cool while you make the batter.

In the bowl of your electric mixer, beat the eggs and sugar at medium-high speed until the mixture has tripled in volume and forms a thick ribbon when the beaters are lifted (about 5 minutes). Add the vanilla extract and beat to combine.

The beginning of the egg beating (click for photo)

The end of the egg beating (clicky, clicky)

Sift a small amount of flour over the egg mixture and, using a large rubber spatula, fold the flour mixture into the beaten eggs to lighten it. Sift the rest of the flour over the egg mixture and fold in, being sure not to over-mix or the batter will deflate.

Whisk a small amount of the egg mixture into the melted butter to lighten it. Then fold in the cooled, melted butter in three additions. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or several hours, until slightly firm.

Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Generously butter two 12-mold madeleine pans. Dust the molds with flour and tap out the excess.

Drop a generous tablespoonful of the batter into the center of each prepared mold, leaving the batter mounded in the center (This will result in the classic “humped” appearance of the madeleines).

Bake the madeleines for 11 to 13 minutes, until the edges are golden brown and the centers spring back when lightly touched. Do not overbake or they will be dry.

Remove the pans from the oven and rap each pan sharply against a tabletop to release the madeleienes. Say in your best John Cleese voice, “Release the madeleines!” Transfer, smooth side down, to wire racks to cool.

Madeleines are best served the same day, but can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for several days.

I’ve been meaning to come over here and do my continuation post on the madeleines, but I’ve just not gotten around to it. All my pictures are on my hard drive at home, and I’m not at home at the moment.

Anyway. Memories. I read somewhere — I am always reading little tidbits of information and never remembering the source — that taste and/or smell is the sense most likely to evoke the strongest, most vivid recollections. Hence, Proust and his madeleines; the crumbs and the lime blossom tisane call forth the house in Combray where his family spent the Easter holidays, where the young Marcel could not sleep without his mother’s goodnight kiss.

My own experience with sense and memory is much more prosaic.

It was “smell” and not “taste” that made me (literally) stop in my tracks as I was walking in Ann Arbor one summer day. It was ungodly hot, the humidity was hovering around 137%, and I was walking home to my (non-air-conditioned) apartment after work. As I came out our back door, I was nearly knocked sideways by the strong breeze blowing through the alley behind the building. This is the alley we share with a few other downtown businesses, most notably a cafe. The garbage cans in the alley had been simmering all day, so this breeze was thick enough to stir with a spoon, let me tell you. There were some lingering fumes from a recent delivery truck.

Heat. The sharp smell of rotting food and diesel fuel.

I was brought up short. This was the scent of…

(pause for dramatic effect) …

Nairobi.

I spent six months studying abroad my junior year at the University of Nairobi (literature, religion and sociology, primarily). This was back in the day when Nairobi was fairly stable. No riots and exploding embassies and such.

Kenya is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful places on earth, and here my most vivid memories of it were elicited by the smell of garbage.

I told you this was prosaic.

Speaking of prosaic, I’ve discovered that I can blame Mickey Mouse (in addition to Sonny Bono) with my inability to get the last two volumes of the new Viking/Penguin Proust translations in the United States until 2018. In order to prevent such a classic film as “Steamboat Willie” entering the Public Domain — quelle horreur! — Mr. Bono authored the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. You can read more about this travesty here and here.

Mr. Bono’s smacking headlong into a tree seems like justice to me. Unfortunately, the Mickey Mouse Protection Act became law 10 months later, Sonny or no Sonny, and Steamboat Willie can rest easy (rest easily, whatever).

I, on the other hand, need to fork out nearly 14 British pounds sterling (I wish I could insert the funky symbol for such) for Time Regained.

It’s not even the hardcover.

I am wiped out.

I spent the greater part of my weekend moving this blog to my own domain name and playing around with WordPress (which is new to me). A lot of what I was doing was playing with the aesthetic, comestic portions of this site, so I must confess that I’ve had very little inclination to actually work on content. Yet.

I am tired of staring at the computer screen. Well, for the moment. Considering that I equate Internet access with other necessities of life — oxygen, primarily — I know I’ll be back writing those discursive posts of mine. I still need to post about the madeleine baking episode and how, in the course of the madeleine baking episode, I discovered that Sonny Bono is responsible for me not being able to buy the final volumes of the new Proust translation in the United States until (get this) 2018.

As of today, I’ve relocated from Blogger to a new site with my own domain name –> itsfuriousbalancing.com. All future posts will now be on the new site. Update your bookmarks, if I can flatter myself with the idea that anyone has bookmarked me.

I’ve imported my old posts from Blogger, and it still looks pretty rough-drafty over at the new site (to me, anyway). It’s evolving, but come visit.

I’m thinking about, and taking steps to accomplish, moving this blog onto my own domain name and using WordPress as my publishing platform.

I’m going to blame Allan for this one. He’s the gentleman who commented yesterday on my madeleine post. We’ve since exchanged brief emails and I’ve spent some more time reading his (very well-written, erudite) blog.

I covet his footnote plug-in functionality.

No, seriously.

I must have footnotes that allow the reader to click on the footnote number, automatically go to the bottom of the page to read said footnote, then click on the “back” button to return to their place in the text.

Go over to his blog and play around with this. I realize I’m a blogging neophyte, but I hadn’t seen this before. Considering my methods (or lack thereof) of writing, this could have some serious consequences for It’s Furious Balancing. Lots of footnotes and other madcap blogging hijinks will ensue, I’m certain.

As to when this move to WordPress will actually occur, that’s up in the air. It depends on my learning curve.

Further bulletins as events warrant.

Photo courtesy of Meme Cats

Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it. – Vladimir Nabokov

It started with a post today on Feministe — a blog I read fairly frequently (if not everyday). It was Mikey’s post on madeleines. Starbucks’ madeleines in cello-wrap, or shrink-wrap, or whatever one calls it, complete with pictures and a link to a very interesting Slate article on Proust’s Belle Epoque madeleines and one man’s attempt to reverse-engineer the recipe based upon hints in the famous madeleine-tea-Aunt Leonie’s lime blossom tisane-Combray passage in the first volume of In Search of Lost Time.

This lead to some comments about the awfulness of Starbucks’ pastries, and the awfulness of their coffee, and their mega-chain evilness (but still how it was oddly comforting to find this mega-chain when out of one’s element). Even though I could have put in some digs about how I believe Starbucks is the Wal-Mart of coffee houses, my first thought was that I should go home and bake some madeleines. My second thought was I should then blog about it. One of the commentors mentioned that she had seen the madeleine-tea-memory reference many, many times, but only knew of one instance where madeleine was a recurring blog tag to mean “memories.”

I strongly feel that madeleines require greater blog presence — of any sort.

I actually own a madeleine pan. I bought it for myself after I first began reading Proust. I’ve made them only once before, but tonight I’ll give it another go.

I’ll take pictures, don’t fret.

This amuses me no end. I want to interject the phrase “cat-toast equilibrium point” or “cat-butter paradox” in my daily conversations. This has probably been out around the Internet for ages and ages, but I just found it. So there.

A more detailed write-up on can be found here.

Today is one of those lovely Saturdays when I have absolutely nothing I have to do. My time is all mine. I can knit, sleep, read, surf the Innernets, and generally spoil myself rotten. Oh, there’s a few loads of laundry that need doing, and a little bit of tidying up around the house, but nothing compelling or necessary by any means. Well, making sure I have clean underwear for next week might fall into the “necessary” category, but the upshot of all of this is that I have loads of Free, Unstructured Time.

That is a glorious thing.

First up, My So Called Scarf. I love these colors. They’re a bit darker than they appear in this photo. I thought diffuse morning sunlight would show them better, but I was wrong. Ah, well. If this is the worse thing to happen to me today, I am lucky indeed.

Second, a few things Found on the Internet that I just haven’t gotten around to posting:

[If you click on Anti-Gravity Cat's picture, you can get him to spin around]

Hey, it makes perfect sense to me (but now I’m craving toast, with lots and lots of Calder Dairy butter).

In the “What the Heck, You Never Know” Department: Kelly at Yoga Coffee Outlook is giving away a Zune MP3 Player. All you need to do to qualify is write that previous sentence in a blog post, and put a comment on her blog, etc. Details here.

I’ve never even read, or wanted to read, any of the Harry Potter books, but I still am sorted into the correct house (the wise, clever, learned, enigmatic ones, I am told):

be sorted @ nimbo.net

But wait! Here’s more silly cat stuff:

Oh, I’ve got tons of these saved on my hard drive:

Cat pics (except anti-gravity cat, whose origin is unknown) courtesy of Meme Cats.

When I left you last, I think the state of my blogged knitting was as follows:

1) Blue proto-sock OTN (“On The Needles,” for my non-knitting-blog-reading readers).

2) Noro sweater pieces awaiting assembly but being ignored because I have to do a shoulder seam next before I proceed with the arm seams and the side seams. I hate shoulder seams (and the fact that it’s always overheated in the cats’ room where I do my blocking and seam sewing, and that it’s summer, and that I hate heat, and summer, and occasionally wish I lived in the far northern section of British Columbia, or, hell, even southern British Columbia. Vancouver, say).

There are other vague, knitting-like activities — like a hot pink charity scarf OTN that I’m working on from time to time to keep my hands busy, and to use up the rest of the hot pink yarn not used in the Kitty Pi — and a serious desire to make My So Called Scarf out of Malabrigo yarn.

I’ve shown you the Malabrigo before; this stuff is woolen opium. I’m still sitting on that black-purple “Paris Nights” colorway, but I wanted a quick knitting fix for my Malabrigo addiction. So, I order two skeins of the worsted in Jewel Blue from my eBay drug, er, yarn, dealer.

The problem was, when the yarn arrived, I was not completely enamored of its color. The eBay photo showed a more intense medium blue than the actual shade of blue – which is more white-to-ice-blue. I don’t fault anyone with that; getting an accurate color from an online photo is difficult (and this particular yarn was kettle-dyed in a limited lot of ten, which lends itself to all sorts of color variations, etc.).

I kept the yarn and started working on the scarf, believing that I would Learn to Love the Yarn.

I do love the yarn. I love how it feels but, Dear Readers, I could not learn to love this color. It’s wimpy. It’s washed out. It’s limp. It’s…. It’s… PASTEL for chrissakes.

I don’t do pastels. I don’t do fluff, flounces, lace, lettuce hems, ruffles or any other of that girly stuff. (2)

Part of being Unable to Love the Yarn was due to the pattern. I really like the stitch pattern. It’s unique and shows off variegated yarn extremely well. There is even a whole flickr group with pictures of this scarf pattern.

Alas, as with many goals, there is a struggle. This particular stitch pattern is challenging to me because it causes me to hold my needles in such a way as to cause a more-than-usually painful bout of repetitive strain injury.

Nonetheless, I carry on because I love the pattern and I Will Make this Scarf Even if it Kills Me, which it just may, at that; and if I’m going to die from knitting-induced RSI, I want it to be from a yarn that makes me weak in the knees.

After all of this preamble, I offer you Malabrigo Chunky, three-ply superfine Merino wool, Colorway 242, Intenso.

Further bulletins as events warrant. I need to be alone with my yarn now.

********
(1) [Alright - I've got footnotes appearing in the title now, for Pete's sake] Alluding, somewhat, to “Dear God, What About the Men?” from Twisty’s blog, which I believe in turn alludes to “Dear God, What About the Children?”, an all-too-frequent, ridiculous sound-bite, um, thing that I see in the media. I think. I love word games and references to obscure tidbits of information I find floating around out there. You know, out THERE. [Insert dismissive hand gesture here] That alleged “Real World” place. But I digress.

(2) Ok, my bathroom is pink, with white-rose shaped shower-curtain hooks, but that all started as a joke when my second husband left me and I Needed a Change.