A nice long weekend. Everything we made for Thanksgiving was edible--tasty, even. I made, among other things, my grandmother's infamous dinner rolls. I was about as successful as anyone that's not Gramma can manage, which is "not particularly". When she makes them they come out soft, dense but not chewy, a little sweet, and with a coating too delicate to be called a crust. I got the texture pretty close, but they proofed for too long, I think, so the yeasties had eaten too much of the sugar. Someday I'll get it right.

There is no better sandwich-making substrate. When I ate meat it was cold leftover turkey or ham, depending on what roll-making occasion had occured the day before. Now I use cheese. Just as good. It's all just an excuse to eat more rolls anyhow.

Depending on whose index card you look at, they're called either Sally Lund or Two-Hour rolls, though I just looked at some versions of these online and they're quite a bit different. I'd put it up here for your viewing pleasure, but A)I like that this is one of the few family secrets we have, and B) none of us are convinced at all we have the right recipe, since gramma's are always perfect and ours are, um, not. I imagine that there is a Ninth Gate-style trick to it, that in order to make the rolls properly we'll need to put all the index cards together. Then Lucifer will appear. Devil Rolls! Perfect.

Much code cleaning has occurred. You hopefully can't see it, although the look of the archives will finally be the same as the rest of the site.
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I hated every page of The Corrections.

But I haven't yet decided whether or not it was a good book.

I didn't hate the book because it was boring. I hated it because the characters took turns making me mad when they weren't arguing and making me suffer twisty stomach when they were. And they argued most of the time: I swear through most of the book there was a 6 page long argument that started every 5 pages. When I finished it, I threw it across the room and sat there pouting like a 5 year old, my arms folded over my chest.

Because I hate emotional subtext, and this is exactly the thing that gets me in trouble in certain family situations. If I am acting in any particular way, my motivation is either A) "This will make you happy in a way that also makes me happy," or B) "This will make me happy in a way that also makes you happy." I know this sounds disingenuous coming from someone with reasonably high standardized test scores, but I'm simply not smart enough to line my actions with subtext. I don't have time for it. I'm too busy thinking about real things, like how to arrange my lab work so I don't have to come in at 7am, or how to turn 250 yards of wool into an item that needs 300 yards. If your emotions are important, I'll ask you about them.

But every person in the book was lining every single action with thick trowels-full of gooey suffocating subtext, and seeing every behavior as Meaningful and Indicitave Of An Entire Relationship. When I read books or see plays that do this (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is another one that comes to mind), I get freaked out. Do people really think this much about their and other people's actions? I know people are--at least, some of them are, because I've been accused of doing things with malice that were simply a result of physical clumsiness.

The end result: I walked around paranoid for a couple of days, feeling like everyone is in on some joke I'm not. Normally I think of myself as a pretty sociable person--a good listener, fair judge of character, disorganized but entertaining storyteller. Suddenly I'm looking up symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome, trying to figure out how I can be so out of synch with the rest of the world.

You see what I mean? How can a bad book have such a strong influence on behavior? Was the writer trying to set me up so that I'd ask Jeremy in the dark to tell me if I ever did something that annoyed him right away, because I'd never know it if he took it out on me at some later time?

All this makes me hate the book more.

Damn you, bad book, for being so good.

Some thoughts on felting:

I've just recently started experimenting with felted fabric, doing a couple of swatches for a messenger bag I'm working on now. I've gotten the gist of it from a couple of different sources, like Knitty. The critical elements are heat, water, and friction, and the consensus seems to be: throw it in a hot wash with a lot of things that will moosh it around, several times if needed (it usually is), then allow it to air dry on a form that will shape the piece the way you want it.

People do crazy things like pour boiling water into their washing machine to make sure it's hot enough, that sort of thing. But it seems to me that there's a much easier way to have hot wet wool roll around until it shrinks to nothing: throw it in the dryer. The dryer gets hotter than the washer usually does, everything starts out damp, at least, and it all gets constantly flung around. No worrying about front-load washers not doing the job, no sending things through the washer 5 times.

I tried this on Saturday. After a hot wash, the swatch was about the same size, but the stitches were a little fuzzy. Partway through the dryer cycle, it was quite a bit smaller but totally dry. I ran it under the sink to dampen it some more, threw it back into the dryer for the last 20 minutes, and that shrunk it a LOT, though it wasn't totally dry. I'm not sure if there's something I'm missing--maybe heating dry wool degrades the fiber or something--but my swatch looked just fine coming out of the dryer, and is doing perfectly well as a drink coaster. If someone needed to block it, they could always rewet the piece to do so. The lint trap was pretty full, but I cleaned it out when I checked on things mid-cycle, so no problems there.

Any thoughts on why this might be a bad idea? The messenger bag is on the backmost of my three burners, and so probably won't be done until after the holidays.

For a while now, my knitting time has been going between socks on size 0 needles, the big lace shawl on 2's, and occasonally a felted bag project that's on big needles, but I'm working on the strap which needs to be approximately 500 miles long before I finish with it. It's been awhile since I've felt like I've made progress on any of these things, even though I've been knitting plenty.

I cast off on the socks last night (I still have ends to weave in, but I don't define something that just needs finishing as being "in-progress"). And it's just an amazing relief to start working on a quick project on big needles. I made clearly visible progress in my bus knitting! Amazing.

Oof. Holiday knitting. Early January sometime, there will be a many part series entitled "things I've wanted to talk about for 5 months, only the gift recipients read the site from time to time and I wanted to surprise them."

Which is funny, because I'm not usually much of a holiday gift-giver. Mostly, I make or buy things for people when I see something that reminds me of them and send it off, no matter the time of year. Being a December Baby, I know I get really excited if I get something outside that two-week time span. On the other hand, this means that I tend to be a slouch around the holidays because I've already used up all the good ideas. So I've been stowing little things away here and there as I think of them, in the hope that they'll add up to an un-cheesy Christmas gifting experience. We'll see if this year's experiment pans out.

In the meantime, knitting content will be pathetic. I've got a pair of socks for myself that will be done by this weekend, and that opens up holiday space for my 3-things-on-the-needles rule. Then radio silence as I turn into an elf.

An excellent idea: Made With Love by a Liberal.

A while back, I was involved with a charity knitting group, but the more time I spent on the mailing list, the more I felt like my donations were being recieved with conservative Christian strings attached. I'd looked for a group with a national scope and a non-religion-based, politically liberal (or even neutral!) approach that focused work within the US, and couldn't find one. So I was thrilled to hear about this new group. None of the details have been worked out yet, I don't think (the person in charge only set it up about a week ago). But I have some hats I threw together ages ago, sitting in the part of my drawer designated as "things I'll do something with eventually" that would be perfect for this.

Spread the word if you can.

Continuing the topic of family cures:

You know that terrible choking death feeling when you swallow something the wrong way? Once you have some control over the coughing and sputtering, lift your hands over your head. You'll still have to cough a little bit but that terrible weight eases and makes you human again. This behavior is automatic to me after being reminded throughout childhood, but since I'm a spaz, my hands wave in the air wildly until I get oxygen. This always provides amusement to dining companions.

I shared this trick with one of my dining hall buddies studying physical therapy one time when he was spluttering from some soda. Once he was done coughing and being mightily impressed by this trick, he came up with the theory that this stretches your spasming diaphragm, which calms it the heck down. I don't have the background to verify this, but it sounds plausible.

TChem's Stepmom's Hiccup Cure:
(The most useful thing she ever taught me).

Get a drinking glass, small enough that you can drink the whole glass without taking the glass from your mouth. I'm really bad at chugging, so I usually can't manage this, but do your best.

Place a long flat object (a butter knife according to family lore, but a chopstick or unbendy straw work just fine in a pinch) into this glass.

Fill the glass with water.

Put your mouth on the glass as if to drink, tilting your head so that it pushes slightly against your long flat object.

Slowly drink as much of the glass as you can in one go, doing these things at the same time. 1: You don't have to drink it fast, but you do have to drink it continuously. No sipping. 2: Maintain contact between forehead and flat object. As you drink your head will begin to tilt at a kind of strange angle, and you'll realize you look silly, but go with it.

I tend to "catch" the hiccups--I won't have them for months, then have a string of attacks over the course of a day or two. This ALWAYS helps, whereas the various breathing exercizes I've tried if I don't have water handy take a while and don't always work. (and yes, I had them today, which is why I thought of posting this. I haven't seen anyone else do it.)

"[What this sweater] actually says: Morse code for 'please kill me.'"

Bad, bad 80's sweaters, via Kim. I enjoy ugly knitting way too much.

Here's an antidote: I'm not the only person working on the Mediterranean shawl. Phew. I'd googled a few times and the chirping crickets made me a little nervous. I'm also pleased that the in-progress picture is farther along than I am at the moment. I'm about a third of the way through the next main section of it, which would be those rectangles coming off the sides. I'm not enjoying knitting this part nearly as much as the first section--the logic rules are few and far between, which means a lot of recounting and quadruple-checking. But it's coming along.

The new mindless project is a messenger-bag looking thing I'm going to felt, so J and I can both have grocery-carrying bags. I'm using the yarn from the gray disaster sweater, which isn't in good enough shape on its own, and a few odds and ends from old projects and a yarn swap my knitting group did last week. I'm making up the pattern as I go along, though I have a pretty good idea of the direction it's headed. If it turns out well, I'll throw it into the pattern section.

And of course there's the bus-knitting sock, whose heel is being turned after a lonely few weeks where I read on the bus instead. Once that one is done, the bus-knitting will merge with Christmas knitting.

And permalinks. Must make permalinks. Soon!

Speaking of HTML code: this may not be here for very long, but I'm trying to explain trackback to Jeremy, and so I'm linking so he can see what the hell I'm talking about.

Permalink I often run out of things to read and have to go trolling around for some new titles. Then I have too many ideas and tear through a ton of things at once. I've been on the heavy-reading end of this cycle right now, so if you happen to be running out of things to read, here are some things that have recently sat on my nightstand, in roughly reverse chronological order:

The Corrections: Ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh. I'd heard good but non-specific things about it so I snagged it at the library when I happened past it.

Take this with a grain of salt because I'm only a third of the way through, and pardonnez mes Francais, but: I am so goddamned tired of the wimpy complaints of middle class/academic fuckups wandering around in a permanent existential crisis being considered as literature. It's Wonder Boys all over again. Do something else! And shut up!

Considering the level of pity I have for myself--someone well on her way to being a middle class academic--shoots down to nil the second I think of working waitress jobs 12 hours a day, I just don't understand how I'm supposed to care about these shallow, shallow people trying to live deep, deep lives. The only thing keeping me reading is the hope that the main character gets the crap beaten out of him, gets damaged in the section of the brain devoted to pathos, and lives out the rest of his days as a happy janitor, scooping up first grader's vomit with sawdust.

The Cryptonomicon: Well, I WAS reading this, but it the library recalled it the day after I got it. Considering it's' something like 1200 pages long, this didn't quite seem fair. I was only in the mid-200's before I needed to bring it back, and haven't read any other Neal Stephenson, so my opinions haven't entirely gelled yet.

What I can say is that at this point there are three main characters with storylines separated by geography and time, but separated in such a way that I'd just about gotten to detecting the soon-to-be-overlapping plotlines. I usually like that "what is that in the distance" bit in books, but for the first 200 pages the only thing that kept me going was one of the three characters. Even then, I suspect I enjoy reading that one character so much simply because he reminds me of the very best parts of a high school friend I can't really deal with anymore, not because the story itself was keeping me going. I probably would have caught some of the subtler plot drifts sooner if I hadn't been heavily skimming 2/3 of the chapters. It was just starting to get fun, though, so I'll probably try to get that copy back and keep on with it.

Chronicles of Narnia (so far books 1&2): I've been meaning to reread these for a few years, but I wanted to do it in order, and it seemed that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was always out at the library. They're as fun as I remembered--the perfect tasty reading snack for when you have a nasty cold.

Tales of the City: Another good book for illness-reading, in perfect tiny bite-sized chunks of droll. Almost all the characters end up being linked with all the other ones, but keeping track isn't critical to enjoyment when feverish. (but don't read at the same time as Chronicles of Narnia unless you want some truly psychedelic dreams--I mentioned this a few weeks ago).

Pompeii: I may write more about this at some point, but when I went to Italy I visited Pompeii and felt a connection as deep as the stones. My heart broke a million times there. Robert Harris nailed my senses of the place to the wall, from the exact point of view I couldn't shake. I wanted to cry, I wanted to run, I wanted to help. My heart broke a million times again. It ends with a drop of water instead of a bang, but I loved every word.

A Cook's Tour: Working in the low rungs of food service, I feel like I've known a dozen Anthony Bourdains. I always loved sitting out on the loading dock with his incarnations, listening to their stories through the cigarette smoke at the end of a shift. His books are a chance for me to listen to a few more of those stories, but without the smell of rotting compost.

The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories: In between the others when I'm in the mood. My tolerance threshold of sci-fi is usually pretty low--when the "Well as you know, Professor Thomas" kicks in, I'm out of there after two paragraphs. I deal with enough real science during the day that my brain kicks around oddly when forced to read fake science, or real science stated badly. Which reminds me: I started Solaris, and put it back on J's shelf 20 pages later. Doesn't seem to merit its own subheading. Anyway, the short stories are short enough that there just can't be very much exposition, so I can handle them.

Sigh. Well, at least I've got plenty of company in my neighborhood--according to J, our voting ward went 88% for Kerry, the highest of any ward in the state.

I TOLD you we were a bunch of pinko commie liberal gay weenies. That's why I love it.

Here's a small something to take your mind off of it.

The scarf I made for my friend Dan. He likes it. I'm happy, because I spent the whole time working on it worrying about the response of Mr. Picky. Done with just shy of 4 balls of Elann's Pure Alpaca, in a basketweave stitch edged all around with I-cord as in this pattern (pdf) from Annie Modesitt's blog. The i-cord left everything looking very tidy, and allowed me to effectively hide the yarn I needed to carry up the side for the stripe.

Voting in my super-duper liberal Wisconsin neighborhood was heavy yet brisk at 8:30 this morning. There were 20 or 30 people ahead of us when we got there, and we waited for about 10 minutes. Then J and I went out for Voting Day Scones at the local coffee shop. Not quite as good as Birthday Cake, but close.

Living in a swing state is fun.

Also, some areas of the crafty section have been updated, and I realized that my method of nomenclature has gotten pretty screwy. So that might get overhauled soon.