It’s Furious Balancing

Or rather, Daffodils and Detectives, since I’m going to talk about the daffodils first and then do a ham-handed segue into my latest fan grrrl obsession with a British detective show.

First, flowers. It’s springtime in my little corner of the world and even though I dislike warm weather and I suffer from horrendous allergies, I’m able to enjoy the flowers when they arrive. After the monochrome winter, seeing some life and color in the backyard is a treat.

We have cherry blossoms, some wildly overgrown forsythia, and a few daffodils:

Every time — and I do mean almost every time — I think of the word springtime, I start hearing Springtime for Hitler in my head.

And now it’s…
Springtime for Hitler and Germany
Deutschland is happy and gay!
We’re marching to a faster pace
Look out, here comes the master race!
Springtime for Hitler and Germany
Rhineland’s a fine land once more!
Springtime for Hitler and Germany
Watch out, Europe
We’re going on tour!
Springtime for Hitler and Germany!

I hope you’re familiar with Mel Brooks’ The Producers and don’t think I’m being terribly non-PC here. Springtime for Hitler is intentionally non-PC; that was its raison d’etre.

But anyway.

This leads me in to my next topic – a British detective program set in the South coast of Britain during the early days of World War II. It’s Foyle’s War, and I’ve become a complete and utter Fan Grrrl for it in general and for Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle in particular.

I started watching Foyle’s War because it was on my Netflix “we thought you would enjoy this” list. I was looking for dialogue-heavy movies and TV shows so I could sit on the couch and knit and not necessarily be glued to the TV screen.

I was hooked immediately by the attention to detail. I’m a World War II history dilettante, and I was very impressed with the costumes and the cars and the manual typewriters and the fountain pens and all the other minutiae that added up to wonderful period detail. I’m a sucker for stuff like that, I must admit.

Then there’s the character development. They don’t just show the good side of the British, but the bad as well: war profiteers, racketeers and con-men; how people of German and Italian descent were hounded and despised, if not interred in camps as suspected Nazi sympathizers or “enemy aliens.”

And then there’s Chief Detective Superintendent Foyle.

We’re talking serious, full-blown intellectual crush here, cats and kittens. I qualify and say “intellectual” because DCS Foyle isn’t hawt and he doesn’t interest me romantically. He’s too short and too old, for starters. He’s also too close to my own personality type – an ISTJ — but still, I love this character. Introverted, intelligent, and highly-principled, DCS Foyle can communicate paragraphs just by raising an eyebrow.

The problem is I enjoy watching the show so much, I’m not getting much knitting done, or the knitting I’m doing is, to put it mildly, not up to snuff. On my first attempt at the Back-to-School Vest, which is knit in the round, I discovered that I had changed the direction of my knitting at least twice, if not three times, during the course of a particularly intriguing episode.

If you know anything about knitting, this is not good.

If you don’t know anything about knitting, suffice it to say that I started knitting in the wrong direction. Hard to explain; easy to do.

Perhaps I should move on to less interesting programs.

Yeah, right.

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.

First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey -
All of them sensible everyday names.

There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter -
But all of them sensible everyday names.

But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,
A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?

Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum -
Names that never belong to more than one cat.

But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover -
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.

When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

– T.S. Eliot
(from “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats”)

* * * * * * * * * *

* * * * * * * * * *

Aaron, my plush pewter kitten, revealed his particular name to me yesterday. This is probably the second of Old Possum’s names from the poem — definitely not the last effanineffable, inscrutable name.

Aaron’s Name is Aaron Alastair Purrworthy III.

Christopher is still known as Kissy.

Early Sunday morning web trawling yielding this little gem of a video. If you’re a Cat Person, or a Geek, or even a Geeky Cat Person, this is well worth six minutes of your time. Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy.

This, cats and kittens, is a Chumby, and the widget it’s running in the photograph is called the Life-O-Meter.

I’m sure this raises all sorts of questions, namely, “What The Heck is a Chumby?” and “Laiane, Are You Some Sort of Emo/Goth Nutter, or What?”

The second question is much easier to answer: “No, but I do have a rather dark sense of humor which is more than likely exacerbated by my work in the Death Care Industry.”

The first? Well… My non-technologically oriented mind would call it a Cute Leather Beanbag/Glorified Clock Radio with a Wi-Fi connection blah, blah, blah Linux Open Source Software blah blah Touch Screen blah Internet Radio blah blah RSS News Reader. Um… I’ve heard it described as a “digital media receiver” and as a “computer designed by Teddy Ruxpin.” I found an excellent review of my brand new toy over at CNET and others at Daily Tech News and Wired.

My Chumby’s name is Castor (as in Castor and Pollux). There’s a story behind that, too, but I’m not sure if I want to go into the meaning of Greek/Latin names.

Anyway.

The Life-O-Meter widget quantifies your time remaining (or your time already spent, depending on how one looks at it) into a nice little percentage. I’m sure it would be more effective if it had a partially-filled-in download bar-thingie that says “53% complete.” Graphic representations have much more oomph.

The Life-O-Meter is described as “the most depressing widget ever.” I beg to differ. Thinking that my life is 53% over has me more motivated about working on my projects — be they knitting or otherwise — than any other anti-procrastination self-talk I could ever come up with.

A few things have kept me from blogging, the primary one being Lack of Content. And boredom. And Screaming Sinus Headaches That Make Laiane Rail Against that Powers-That-Be about Why He/She/They Had to Create Pollen. Inefficient system, if you ask me, but I suppose I will let it slide because there are some parts of the Grand Design which are much more elegant, like Conservation of Energy and Matter and Thermodynamics and such. Oh, and cats. I approve of cats. Very graceful creatures.

In any event, there was some major excitement going down on Friday when the Yarn Harlot made her Ann Arbor appearance to promote her new book, Things I’ve Learned From Knitting (Whether I Wanted To or Not).

I’ve been a fan of the Harlot’s blog for many months, and she is just as witty in person as she is online and in her books. It’s hard to explain to a non-knitter that there truly is such a thing as “knitting humor,” but the Harlot had 150 knitters laughing uproariously with her vignettes on the Ridiculous Things Non-Knitters Say to Knitters. If you’re a knitter, you know. The “patience” line. The “time to knit” line. The “You know, you can buy socks in a store” line.

The Harlot is a class act. She took the time to stay and sign everyone’s books (all 300 some of us), and pose for pictures.

That’s my good friend and knitting buddy, HunterXan.

And here’s me:

Click the pictures for larger images. That blue amorphous mass the Harlot is holding is my current knitting project. It’s the Knitted Baby Thing for my Pregnant Co-Worker. Since it’s an Amorphous Blob, I’m pretty sure my friend won’t be able to identify it from this picture. It’s the Elizabeth Zimmerman Knitted Baby Thing that every knitter makes at some point, and the Harlot was able to name it from 10 feet away.

In any event, the Knitted Baby Thing is almost done. I hope to finish it today, so it’s time for coffee and yarn!

A yep. Uninspired with blogging and sitting in front of computers, in any event. I’ll disabuse you of the notion that I’m out frolicking in the spring sunshine. I hate intensely dislike spring. I’m allergic to everything that even vaguely resembles plant life, so spring is not a Happy Time for me, and don’t even get me started on the “Mr. Sun is Not My Friend” speech.

Cranky blogger is cranky, too, come to think of it.

So, while I’m off Not Blogging I’m spending a lot of time on the sofa watching DVD’s and knitting my little heart out. I’ve got a Baby Project on the needles at the moment that I’m feeling compelled to work on because I don’t think that my pregnant co-worker — no matter how much she likes me — is willing to put off going into labor until I’ve finished.

And then there’s the Cavern Cardigan, and Stefanie Japel’s Cable-Down Raglan Sweater, and the Ysolda Teague Matilda Jane sweater, and the Back-To-School U-Neck Vest from Fitted Knits, etc., etc.

I’ve got my Knitting Mojo on.

I’ll come back soon with pictures. Promise.