It’s Furious Balancing

Oh my name it is nothin’
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I was taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side.

I am distressed that this day has been designated “Patriot’s Day.”  I feel that today has very little to do with patriots.  Today is the anniversary of when the definition of patriotism changed.

Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalry charged
The Indians fell
The cavalry charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.

To be a patriot in the early years after 9-11 meant that you didn’t ask questions.  It meant that you didn’t search for the facts — let alone the truth — of what happened.  It meant that you never thought about why it happened.  It was far too complicated to look at the history of U.S. interference in the Middle East when you could be satisfied with  “They did it because they hate freedom.”

Oh the First World War, boys
It closed out its fate
The reason for fighting
I never got straight
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don’t count the dead
When God’s on your side.

To be a New Patriot meant you thought the Geneva Conventions were optional.  To be a New Patriot meant you condoned the use of torture.

But now we got weapons
Of  chemical dust
If fire them we’re forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God’s on your side.

To be a New Patriot meant you believed that the erosion of civil liberties was acceptable.  To be a New Patriot meant you felt the slaughter of persons who had absolutely nothing to do with 9-11 was a point of pride.

In a many dark hour
I’ve been thinkin’ about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can’t think for you
You’ll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.

It disgusts me beyond measure that the 2,974 people who died on this day are “honored” with such an empty, hollow word.  We need to call today by a different name.

The first phase of knitting is obsession.  Everyone knits too much when they start.  Everyone worries that they’re obsessed.  Everyone worries that they won’t be able to stop, or that they’re getting carried away.  The bad news is that you’re not going to be able to stop, that you are getting carried away, you’re knitting too much, and that things are probably going to get worse.  The good news is that soon you’ll be in so deep you won’t care anymore.   — The Yarn Harlot

Remember those blue socks I was going to make?  Well, they’ve landed in the “hibernating” pile while I’m working on other projects.  A lot of other projects:

A fuchsia cabled vest, knit in the round.

A sideways-knit cloche from Boutique Knits in a royal blue bulky alpaca.

To see the finished cloche, check out the great photos on this blog post.

A Noro striped scarf alternating two different colorways of Noro Kureyon. Click on the gallery photos to embiggen.

I have to add that I’ve made much more progress on the vest and the hat than those pictures show.  The hat is ready to be seamed and have stitches picked up for a cable running up the side.  The vest is about 2 inches longer.  Only the scarf pictures are current.

These are the projects on My Knitting Rotation.  There are a few other UFO’s out there — besides the socks — lurking in various phases of unfinishedness.  These three are just the ones I can’t keep my hands off of.

Not only that, I’ve got a zillion things on my To Be Knit list  — thrummed mittens, a cabled hoodie by one of my favorite designers, an entrelac beret — and I’m chomping at the bit to get started on those.  I’m going to make myself finish a current WIP before I cast on anything else.

I promise.

Really.

I thought it would be appropriate — considering my woeful grasp on U.S. history — to read the text of the Declaration of Independence.  Taking ten minutes, if not less, to read up on Why I’m Enjoying a Three-Day Weekend seemed like a good idea to me (and it’s helping me put off the housework that needs doing).

In any event, I drew some interesting parallels between Getting Rid of King George and Getting Rid of Dubya; and, yes, my emphasizing certain bits is my not-so-thinly-veiled attempt at editorializing.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world….

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance….

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power….

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury;

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses….

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments;

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever….

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.  A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Amen. Amen. Amen.  Enjoy your Independence Day, cats and kittens.

“You lack faith,” said Candide.

“It is because,” said Martin, “I have seen the world.”

– Voltaire (Candide, Chapter XXIV)

Checking in — Not necessarily because I have something to say.  I’m hoping if I start typing something, anything, I can get out of the not-blogging rut.

For the insatiably curious:  I have played 350 games of that 1-win-in-200 solitaire game without winning a single hand.

For the knitters:  I finally finished the Black Rose socks.  I have rechristened them the “Thorn in My Side” Socks.  10 weeks of knitting.  It’s not that it’s a difficult pattern or that the yarn was hard to work with.  It was all operator error.   I ripped back the second sock after I seriously goofed the heel turn and tried to fix it.  I frogged four-weeks’ of progress in a fit of pique.  I don’t have a decent picture to show you yet , though.  My photography skills, such as they are, are failing me.

For those monitoring my mental health:  Let’s just say that if I wasn’t on Wellbutrin, things would be Extremely Bad.  On the Wellbutrin, it’s Merely Bad in General.  Hate summer.  Hate light.  Hate heat.  I’ve been trying to make a list of “positive” things about summer.  Let’s see.

• Lots of time sitting in an air conditioned house working on big knitting projects. 
• Thunderstorms.
• Fresh home-grown catnip for the pusses.
• Nectarines, my favorite fruit, are in season (and sold in lovely air-conditioned produce sections at the store).

That’s it.  The rest of it is all sweat and humidity and mosquitoes and People Who Really Shouldn’t Be Wearing Anything Sleeveless.

Enjoy your weekend, cats and kittens.  I’ll be sitting on my couch, watching documentaries, and ploughing through 4 inches of 1×1 ribbing.  On 220 stitches.  Pictures may or may not be forthcoming.  I’m just happy to keep my head about water right now.

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.

Ernest Hemingway

I’ve been juggling two alternatives in my mind this morning,  whether to (a) dive back into blogging after a long absence and a Paris vacation, or (b) vacuum the floor of my study, which, in the light of day, looks like it has been covered in enough cat hair to knit half a dozen cats.   I’m choosing the first of the two, but I need to remind myself every now and then not to turn around and look at the floor because it really, really needs some attention with The Cat Sucking-Up Monster (i.e., the Dyson vacuum cleaner).  Distracting, that.  It’s best to pretend that the cat hair just isn’t there.

There certainly isn’t anything that I can add to all the words ever used to describe the City of Lights.  I can easily romanticize the city, but my words seem meager, paltry, and few.  I’m  completely inept at photographing a cityscape, and it seems as though people are more interested in “What museums did you go to?” or “Did you see this, that, or the other thing?” than in hearing about feelings or impressions.

I joke that I need to leave the United States every few years.  The U.S.  is too loud, too brash,  and too shallow.  It’s all about SUV’s, “bling,” trashy celebrities, bad television, the Super Bowl, Wal-mart, Starbucks, and the never-ending dumbing down of the media with its non-investigative, non-challenging journalism and 10-second sound bites.  The banality of culture.  The poverty of thought and expression.   I could go on, but I’m only agitating myself.  Let’s just say that if you can’t understand my need to get away from the United States, my reasons for traveling to Paris aren’t going to make much sense.

I go to Paris for the human scale.

I go for its antiquity  — America is so very, very young.

I go for the bread, cheese, chocolate, butter, and wine (and, that in a Paris restaurant, “slow service” equals “good service”).

I go because it is a city of museums, even though I didn’t go to a single one.

I go because it reminds me that I really need to get around to reading Voltaire. 

I go because “the older woman” is still valued.

I go because it is perfectly acceptable to have a glass of champagne as an apéritif.

The best of America drifts to Paris. The American in Paris is the best American. It is more fun for an intelligent person to live in an intelligent country. France has the only two things toward which we drift as we grow older—intelligence and good manners.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Oh, of course The Husband and I did some of the Tourist Things, and we have pictures to prove it. Well, he has pictures. All I really wanted to take pictures of was Père Lachaise and I did that. In spades.

The whole set can be found on Flickr, and I may (or may not) pretty them up some and publish them here.

My neck hurts, and my head hurts, and I’m still working on adjusting back to my usual hours — which aren’t that usual to begin with.  Later, cats and kittens.

Say fromage –

I collect the written word:  Books, obviously, but I also collect quotes.  The vast majority aren’t written down, really; they just stay in my (very fuddled) memory.

While cleaning up around the desk in my study, I found a piece of note paper that had the “petty and vindicative” quote about pain that I’d been searching for for years.  The quote, not the specific piece of paper.

My quote searching would have been much easier if I had remembered who said it — for some reason I was thinking H. L. Mencken when it was really W. Somerset Maugham. Big difference.

Anyway.  Ahem.  The “petty and vindictive” quote:

It is not true that suffering enobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.

It could have been Mencken…

1.  From Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address

[W]e reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

2.  From Artyarn, Silk Rhapsody, in a color I can only describe as Quicksilver:

I’m fighting off a cold, so that’s as in-depth as my blog posting is going to get for today.

Sleep well, cats and kittens.  Tomorrow is a brand new world.

I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered, but I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue:  No good in a bed but fine up against a wall.

Even though the quote is decidedly Mae West-ish, that was actually said by Eleanor Roosevelt.  That made my day.

This is one of the dozen roses currently residing in my bathroom.  I enjoy having fresh flowers in the house.

There is no doubt in my mind that this is the best time of year.    A phrase I recently discovered is Winter Finding – the time between the autumnal equinox and the first of November.  The intolerable heat and humidity of the summer is over and we’re running headlong into frost.  Light becomes muted.  The days smell cleaner.  I keep telling myself that I need to get out and photograph the changing leaves, but between doubting my ability as a photographer and the swiftness of the season, I don’t think that will happen.

Said a blade of grass to an autumn leaf, “You make such a noise falling! You scatter all my winter dreams.”

Said the leaf indignant, “Low-born and low-dwelling! Songless, peevish thing! You live not in the upper air and you cannot tell the sound of singing.”

Then the autumn leaf lay down upon the earth and slept. And when spring came she waked again — and she was a blade of grass.

And when it was autumn and her winter sleep was upon her, and above her through all the air the leaves were falling, she muttered to herself, “O these autumn leaves! They make such a noise! They scatter all my winter dreams.”  –Kahlil Gibran, The Madman

There’s nothing like autumn and its soft decay to bring out the pseudo-gothy Miss Havisham-y part of my personality.

This is the Vintage Velvet scarf I’ve been working on the past two weeks.  I cranked it out in record time — record time for me, in any event.  One of the reasons it went so quickly was because I truly dislike the yarn.  I wanted to be done knitting with it as soon as I possibly could so I wouldn’t have to handle it any longer than I had to.

It’s Muench’s Touch Me, a rayon microfiber and wool blend.  It sheds like a mangy cat, has no stitch definition to speak of and, being chenille, it worms.  While chenille yarn is pretty and plush, it is a bitch to work with — its tendency to worm being the major problem.  I can’t explain exactly why chenille does what it does, but there’s an explanation here.

In a fit of pique, I stayed up until all hours one night last week to finish this scarf and felt it.  I had never before thrown yarn into soapy hot water with such heartfelt abandon.  I was ready to drown this thing.  It was loose and loopy going into the washer, and I was praying that the Felting Gods would work their magic.

They did.

For this pattern, you need to use the yarn it calls for — not any chenille yarn will give you the same effect.   The wool core of the yarn constricts and tightens, and the fluffy rayon bits come together to give the scarf its crushed velvet patina.  A trip through the dryer lifts the nap on the velvet.

Project Notes  – Vintage Velvet

Pattern: “Vintage Velvet” from the book, Scarf Style

Size: After felting – 54 inches by 5 1/2 inches.  Since I stretched and pinned it for the final blocking, there was remarkably little shrinkage.

Yarn: Muench Touch Me, 5 balls, in Slate Blue

Needles: Denise Interchangables, U.S. Size 8.  They are my least slippery needles, which is important when working with chenille.

Mods: None

Other Stuff: I would gladly pay through the snout to buy this yarn in another color for the same project.  However, before that happens, I need must let the horror of my first experience fade.

Copper dragons…are born tricksters and jokesters. They are quite devious and clever, but their intent is purely benign.  They do not seek to harm  ‘lesser’ creatures, but merely wish to impress them with superior intelligence and wit…. When it comes to combat, copper dragons prefer to avoid it.  Rather than fighting openly, they prefer to taunt, humiliate, and tease their opponents until they simply give up and run away…. When forced, however, a copper dragon will fight to the very end, and is an incredibly devious antagonist.  (Source:  Dungeons & Dragons Wikipedia)

I’m a quiet person, for the most part:  Introverted; decidedly not flashy; dressing primarily in black, gray, and shades of blue.  Every now and then, however, I want something outside my comfort zone.  The last time this happened, it was yarn.

Yeah, yeah;  I know.  “Yarn?  You’re really riding the razor’s edge, aren’t you, Laiane?  Yarn?  Big whoop.”

This yarn was different.  This yarn sang to the deepest, darkest corner in my heart.  It was a precious metal, sunlight on gemstones, the color of the treasures of the earth.  It was Alchemy Silk Purse in the Desert Song colorway, and it made me think of dragon scales.

I wanted a lightweight scarf to go with my lightweight leather jacket, and the pattern I chose was perfect.

PROJECT NOTES – Copper Dragon Scarf

Pattern: Dragon Scales Scarf, a free knitting pattern from Heritage Yarns.

Size: After blocking, 6 inches by 42 inches.   I got to block lace for the first time with this project.   I bought lace blocking wires and everything.

Yarn: The aforementioned Alchemy Silk Purse, a 100% silk yarn, slubbed and highly reflective.  My only complaint with silk is that it doesn’t have a lot of “give” to it, so it’s almost like knitting with cotton.  Almost, not quite.  Silk is much sexier.  The silk also presented a blocking challenge to me, since I didn’t want to do my usual wet blocking.  I had read that silk becomes very fragile if you soak it, and I wasn’t taking any chances with this scarf.  I used the blocking wires to stretch the project first, then I sprayed it with water to “set” the stitches.  I did this on the futon in the Cat Room, after carefully covering it with towels to avoid the transfer of cat hair.  I covered the blocked, stretched, wet scarf with a bed sheet.  Cats and lace knitting is An Accident Waiting To Happen.

Needles:  Addi Turbo Lace Needles, 24″ circular, U.S. Size 6 

Mods: None.

Challenges and Stuff: The aforementioned blocking of silk.  My first real lace project.  The Rose Red Beret had lots of what I call “lace elements,” but it wasn’t a super-fiddly charted pattern with fine yarn and lots of yarnovers and ssk’s and k2tog’s and such.  You know – Real Lace.

I’m going to doom myself right now and declare that Lace Knitting is Fun.  Well, taking something that looks like ramen noodles and transforming it with water is the fun part.  The actual knitting part of the equation isn’t so fun since it requires higher standards of perfection on the part of the knitter.   You can’t fudge a few accidental yarnovers and expect your scarf to look like the FO pictures that come with the pattern.

Not too much, anyway.

On we sweep with threshing oar,
Our only goal will be the western shore.

The Viking Baby Hat is now – officially – an FO. A Finished Object. Completed. Done. Stick a fork in it.

My highly cooperative model for this photo shoot is Socks the Cat. He usually sits on the back of our living room sofa, looking out the front window. Our other cats sit up there with him sometimes and watch the world go by. I wonder what our mailman thinks.

Socks is also responsible for all the Led Zeppelin lyrics scattered throughout this post. If you’re totally lost, go check out the Viking Kittens. (WARNING: Plays Led Zeppelin music and a Flash animation.)

We come from the land of the ice and snow
From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.

The hammer of the gods
Will drive our ships to new lands
To fight the horde — singing and crying:
Valhalla I am coming!

This was my first FO for Ravelympics 2008. If you’re a knitter on Ravelry, you may have heard about this. The idea is to complete a challenging project, or several challenging projects, during the Beijing Summer Olympics. You couldn’t cast on before the Olympic flame was lit at the opening ceremonies, and you need to finish before the flame is extinguished at the end of the games.

Knitting events were named after “real” Olympic events, and I signed up for Baby Dressage and the Glove Decathlon. We also joined up in teams, either by geographical region or Ravelry Group.  You didn’t have to pick a team to participate, but I did.   I’m a member of Team Obama and Team Michigan.

This is very loosely organized. You can be a member of multiple teams, but you must limit a project to one team only (i.e., I couldn’t count this one baby hat for both Team Obama and Team Michigan.  I had to choose one of them). You are competing only against yourself; you aren’t out to “beat” other knitters. Once you finish your project, you get a bloggy widget thing at the end of the games.  It’s sort of like the Special Olympics – all participants get a medal.

PROJECT NOTES

Ravelympics Team:  Obama

Made for:  A gal in our old EverQuest 2 guild who is expecting her first baby.  I don’t know when she’s due, but it must be soon!  Edited to Add:  Baby Nicolai will make his appearance on or about November 3rd.

Pattern: Baby Viking Hat Kit from Bella Knitting.

Yarn: Karabella Aurora 8, Dark Gray (approx. ¼ ball, 25 yards); Brown (approx. ⅔ ball, 65 yards); and Cream (a teeny, tiny amount; they didn’t send a full ball of yarn with the kit).

Needles: US Size 6, both DPN’s and 16″ circular.

Mods: I made the hat ½ inch shorter (3½” instead of 4″) before beginning the “every other row” decreases.  I started doing the “every row” decreases for the crown about 4 rows earlier than the pattern called for.  I wanted to shorten the length a wee bit.  I saw too many FO pictures where the hat looked more like a stocking cap (or the Pope’s mitre) than a helmet.

Challenges: Sewing on those damned wings was the hardest part. Making 21 bobbles on the same row was the most tedious knitting I’ve done in a long time.  I consider overcoming Bobble Boredom a challenge. My personal preference is No Bobbles Whatsoever On Any Knitted Item, but the hat really needed them to get that certain je ne sais quoi that says “Viking Helmet.”

How soft your fields so green,
Can whisper tales of gore,
of how we calmed the tides of war.
We are your overlords.

My next Ravelympics challenge is the Welig Gloves from Robin Melanson’s Knitting New Mittens & Gloves for Team Michigan.

Those bobbles have got to go.

Steek (stēk) To pierce with a sharp instrument; hence, to stitch; to sew; also, to fix; to fasten.

From a knitter’s point of view, that’s an extremely tepid definition.  It concentrates far too much on the fixing/fastenening/sewing side of things and says far too little about taking scissors and hacking apart an almost-finished sweater.  The Wikipedia entry is more enlightening:

In knitting, steeking is a shortcut used to knit things like sweaters in the round without interruption for openings or sleeves until the end.  After completing a tube, a straight line is cut along the center of a column of stitches in order to make room for an opening…. The steek itself is a bridge of extra stitches in which the cut is made and is usually 6-10 stitches wide.  This technique was developed by the knitters of the Shetland archipelago and is particularly associated with Fair Isle sweaters, although it can be used for solid colors as well, blah, blah, blah.

The magic of knitting is that you can create a garment out of a length of string. The horror of steeking is that you must make a Leap of Faith and cut into the garment, praying all the while that it doesn’t unravel before your eyes.

Steeking is the one technique most likely to cause knitters to self-impale on their own needles.  It is seriously scary stuff.  Worse than turning the heel of a sock.  Worse than p3togtbl with Rowan Kidsilk Haze. Worse than, oh, I don’t know what, but I think that cutting a steek is the one technique most likely to cause a Major Knitting Freak Out.

To tell the truth, it really wasn’t all that bad.  I didn’t even need alcohol or chocolate cake to fortify myself beforehand — just a hot bath.

I think part of the Lack of Panic is because I chose a steek-appropriate yarn for my project.  I’ve been working on a Noro Kureyon striped vest the past few weeks.  The original pattern over on Knitty.com called for alternating two different colorways of Noro, but I fell in love with Colorway 195 (blue, black, olive, gray) and wanted a vest made entirely with that.

Steeking is best done with rougher, stickier wool, and Noro Kureyon is definitely sticky.  I wouldn’t have been so confident with something smoother (like Noro Silk Garden) or a less “rustic” (i.e., more processed) yarn.  The Kureyon, however, is perfect for steeking.

Despite this, I did have The Husband sew in a reinforcing zig-zag on either side of the line of knit stitches to go under the knife scissors.   I have heard of knitters who don’t use sewn or crocheted reinforcements and just cut a naked, unreinforced steek.  I might be crazy, but I’m not that crazy.   I basted a line of red yarn through the stitches to be cut and he obliged me with his l33t sewing skillz.  Click the Pic for “Really Big” Size.

I must apologize for my horrible pictures.  There is something about this colorway that defies a decent shot.  I think the “gray” stripes, which are an amalgam of purple, green, and silver, throw off the color balance feature on my digital camera.  I have not yet been able to take a halfway acceptable photograph of it. 

When it came time to actually take scissors to my knitting — the knitting I had worked on for 3 weeks, the knitting made with my favorite color of Noro Kureyon — I was quite calm.  I’m the sort of person who doesn’t see much sense in making a fuss about inevitabilities.  The vest was knitted; the steek was sewn.  What’s to be gained by wringing my hands and whining about it?

Not much, aside from looking weak and/or foolish.  So I just got ‘er done.

I get to use my nifty Addi Cro-Hook to pick up stitches for the neck and armhole bands once she dries from her wet block.  I should have Finished Object pictures soon.

Permission to look smug?

Every now and then, since I’ve watched the Lord of the Rings movies half a dozen times, I get bits of dialogue stuck in my head.  Gollum’s dialogue usually.  I wonder where this bit came from?

Sam:  What are you up to?  Sneaking off, are we?

Gollum:  Sneaking?  Sneaking?  Fat hobbit is always so polite.  Smeagol shows them secret ways that nobody else could find and they say “sneak.”  Sneak?  Very nice friend.  Oh, yes, my precious.  Very nice, very nice.

Sam:  All right, all right!  You just startled me is all.  What were you doing?

Gollum:  Steeking.  Sneaking.

Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.

I’ve had those two lines of poetry rattling around in my head because I’m feeling quite smug about two new knitting tools I’ve discovered.  “New to me” anyway; they’ve been around a while.

The first will warm the cockles of anyone’s heart — anyone who has ever felt discouraged or apprehensive about those ubiquitous finishing instructions, “Pick up and knit 124 stitches around the neckline.”

That’s an Addi Turbo Cro-Needle — a 32-inch circular needle with a US size 2 crochet hook on one end and a US size 3 needle tip on the other.  I believe that the person who came up with this one should be beatified; I certainly think it’s a miracle.  In my Innernet surfing research, it appears that there was a Sticks & String podcast some 6 months or so ago that mentioned the Cro-Needle, but I found out about it on Ravelry.

Ravelry is also to blame for my next purchase, which arrived on my doorstep yesterday.  I’ve been looking for an organizational solution to the circular needle mess that is currently breeding in a shoebox in my study.  Perhaps if I contain the prurient little buggers in individual self-sealing PVC sleeves (sorted by size) things will settle down.

This was an inexpensive purchase.  A short Innernet shopping search found an equivalent knitting needle organizer for $34.99.  I paid $17.99 for this.  The explanation for the price difference?

Yes, cats and kittens, it’s a fishing tackle organizer.  I am the proud owner of a Bass Pro Shop Extreme Worm Binder. Since it came, I’ve been dying to write a faux review on the Bass Pro Web site raving about how the circular knitting needle mess on my boat is a thing of the past, how well it stands up to a salt-water knitting environment, and does it come in pink?

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.