It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood

This was the view out my windshield as I headed to work this morning:


Are we tired of this yet?

Double-size "Tree of Life" Prayer Shawl recipe

Kristi asked for the pattern for the prayer shawl I'm putting together next. It's more of a concept than a pattern at present. Here's what I've got so far:

I'm going to make the prayer shawl in three sections, to make it easier to carry around. I have a friend who is an excellent crocheter, and she's agreed to seam the three panels and add a lacy border around the whole thing.

I'm probably going to use a decent but generic wool blend or acrylic like Simply Soft, Woolease or Vanna's Favorite for cost reasons. I'd love to use one of the gorgeous merinos available at my my favorite alpaca farm & yarn shop, but I'm doing this out of my own pocket so there has to be some limits. Each of the three panels will be about 100 stitches wide, done with two strands of worsted weight held together throughout (for bulk & speed) on about a size 15 needle. The two side panels will be in a basic lace pattern similar to the 9/06 mid-month dishcloth KAL (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MonthlyDishcloths/files/%2A%2AKALs%20-%202006%2A%2A/). The important thing is that it's not boring, doesn't cause a ripple or distort the fabric, and stays more or less in the "growing things" theme.

The center panel will have a strip of the same lace below and above, but will have a center image of a pair of intertwined trees swiped from the "Tree of Life" pattern on lionbrand.com. (Again, I'm hoping the doubled yarn will bulk up the image.)
I may actually swatch and adjust the numbers a bit, since I'm hoping to end up with a shawl big enough to use as a throw - maybe 36" tall by 72" wide. I've talked to the three grown children of the couple, and there will be a point in the service (which will be a surprise to the couple) where the three kids get up and wrap the shawl around their parents, and then participate in the blessing.

That's what I've got just now. Let me know what you think.

Placemats for Dad

So Dad's in his new house now, and I really wanted to send him something to make it feel more like home and less like a furniture showroom. Here's what I came up with:


Dad's table is bigger than mine, so my plan was for six place mats and a table runner. I started out with two 1-lb cones of Peaches & Creme "light blue," a size 11 (or so) circular needle, and a rough idea that I wanted something not too fou-fou. As you can see, they need to be blocked and I ran out of yarn just short of half-way through placemat #5 - but my trust Saukville Wal-Mart special ordered the first two pounds of cotton for me, and still has another pound of the same stuff on their shelf from that order, so they've put my name on it and I can pick it up on my way by on Tuesday. With any luck, it will even be the same dye lot!

Anyway, I'm getting itchy to send the first batch off to Dad so I can get some feedback and the buzz of having gotten them safely into the mail. So I want to crib down the recipe for the placemat, to be sure the last two actually match when I send them off to meet their brothers. Here we go:

Placemats
Hold two strands of yarn together and knit as one throughout.
Cast on 52 stitches
Rows 1-3 (Border): work in seed stitch (k1, p1 for 1 row; p1, k1 the next)
Rows 4-7: work 3 stitches of seed stitch for border, then stockinette stitch to last 3 stitches, then switch back to seed stitch for 3 stitch border.
Row 8: work border, knit 2 (yarn over, knit two together, knit 2) until 5 stitches before end of row, knit 2, work border.
Row 9-13: work border, stockinette stitch to last 3 stitches, work border.
Row 14: work border, knit 4 (yarn over, knit two together, knit 2) until 5 stitches before end of row, knit 4, work border.
Row 15-19: work border, stockinette stitch to last 3 stitches, work border.
Row 20: repeat Row 8
Row 21 - 37: work border, stockinette stitch to last 3 stitches, work border.
Row 38: repeat Row 8
Row 39-43: work border, stockinette stitch to last 3 stitches, work border.
Row 44: Repeat Row 14
Row 45-49: work border, stockinette stitch to last 3 stitches, work border.
Row 50: Repeat Row 8
Rows 51-55: work border, stockinette stitch to last 3 stitches, work border.
Row 56-58: work in seed stitch to make final border. Bind off and weave in ends

Table Runner
Hold two strands of yarn together and knit as one throughout.
Cast on 132 stitches.
Rows 1-3 (Border): work in seed stitch (k1, p1 for 1 row; p1, k1 the next)
Rows 4-15: work 3 stitches of seed stitch for border, then stockinette stitch to last 3 stitches, then switch back to seed stitch for 3 stitch border.
Row 16: work border, knit 2 (yarn over, knit two together, knit 2) until 5 stitches before end of row, knit 2, work border.
Row 17-21: work border, stockinette stitch to last 3 stitches, work border.
Row 22: work border, knit 4 (yarn over, knit two together, knit 2) until 5 stitches before end of row, knit 4, work border.
Row 23-27: work border, stockinette stitch to last 3 stitches, work border.
Row 28: repeat Row 16
Row 29-40: work border, stockinette stitch to last 3 stitches, work border.
Row 41-43: work in seed stitch to make final border. Bind off and weave in ends.

That's it. Wish me luck on finishing the last two.

Oh, and I finished Austin's new socks. They're MSU Spartan socks, per his request. He says he needs to show them to his Grandpa Deters, who's a UM fan. Maybe I'll get them in the mail this week, too?

You can get anything you want . . .

Okay, Christmas gifts to be distributed at Michigan Thanksgiving:

• 3 pair of heavy socks in Dan's ever-useful pattern - check!



• 4 nose warmers for the little kids, along with finger puppets and treats - check!



• knitting calendar, craft show bag, junk food "study kit," and wine thingee for other gifts - check!

Food:

• sugar-free bumbleberry pie: in work at my wonderful baking neighbor's house, to be picked up tonight.



• rice and cranberry salad: test run successful, ingredients for double batch ready to go tonight.



• sausage for munchies: purchased & loaded

Laundry: yeah, yeah . . . tonight, I promise. Right after church.

Packing: see Laundry, above.

Change oil on the car: oh, crap. Okay, at lunch break today?

This song is called "Alice's Restaurant." It's about Alice, and the restaurant, but "Alice's Restaurant" is not the name of the restaurant, that's just the name of the song. That's why I call the song "Alice's Restaurant."

Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago... two years ago, on Thanksgiving, when my friend and I went up to visit Alice at the restaurant. But Alice doesn't live in the restaurant, she lives in the church nearby the restaurant, in the bell tower with her husband Ray and Facha, the dog. And livin' in the bell tower like that, they got a lot of room downstairs where the pews used to be, and havin' all that room (seein' as how they took out all the pews), they decided that they didn't have to take out their garbage for a long time. We got up here and found all the garbage in there and we decided that it'd be a friendly gesture for us to take the garbage down to the city dump. So we took the half-a-ton of garbage, put it in the back of a red VW microbus, took shovels and rakes and implements of destruction, and headed on toward the city dump. Well, we got there and there was a big sign and a chain across the dump sayin', "This dump is closed on Thanksgiving," and we'd never heard of a dump closed on Thanksgiving before, and with tears in our eyes, we drove off into the sunset lookin' for another place to put the garbage. We didn't find one till we came to a side road, and off the side of the side road was another fifteen-foot cliff, and at the bottom of the cliff was another pile of garbage. And we decided that one big pile was better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up, we decided to throw ours down. That's what we did.

Drove back to the church, had a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, went to sleep, and didn't get up until the next morning, when we got a phone call from Officer Obie. He said, "Kid, we found your name on a envelope at the bottom of a half a ton of garbage and I just wanted to know if you had any information about it." And I said, "Yes sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie. I put that envelope under that garbage." After speakin' to Obie for about forty-five minutes on the telephone, we finally arrived at the truth of the matter and he said that we had to go down and pick up the garbage, and also had to go down and speak to him at the Police Officer Station. So we got in the red VW microbus with the shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the Police Officer Station.
Now, friends, there was only one of two things that Obie could've done at the Police Officer Station, and the first was that he could've given us a medal for bein' so brave and honest on the telephone (which wasn't very likely, and we didn't expect it), and the other thing was that he could've bawled us out and told us never to be seen drivin' garbage around in the vicinity again, which is what we expected.

But when we got to the Police Officer Station, there was a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon, and we was both immediately arrested, handcuffed, and I said, "Obie, I can't pick up the garbage with these here handcuffs on." He said: "Shut up kid, and get in the back of the patrol car." And that's what we did . . . sat in the back of the patrol car, and drove to the quote scene of the crime unquote.

I wanna tell you 'bout the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where this is happenin'. They got three stop signs, two police officers, and one police car, but when we got to the scene of the crime, there was five police officers and three police cars, bein' the biggest crime of the last fifty years and everybody wanted to get in the newspaper story about it.
And they was usin' up all kinds of cop equipment that they had hangin' around the Police Officer Station. They was takin' plaster tire tracks, footprints, dog-smellin' prints and they took twenty-seven 8 x 10 colored glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explainin' what each one was, to be used as evidence against us. Took pictures of the approach, the getaway, the northwest corner, the southwest corner . . . and that's not to mention the aerial photography!

After the ordeal, we went back to the jail. Obie said he was gonna put us in a cell.
He said: "Kid, I'm gonna put you in a cell. I want your wallet and your belt."I said, "Obie, I can understand your wantin' my wallet, so I don't have any money to spend in the cell, but what do you want my belt for?" and he said, "Kid, we don't want any hangin's." I said, "Obie, did you think I was gonna hang myself for litterin'?" Obie said he was makin' sure, and, friends, Obie was, 'cause he took out the toilet seat so I couldn't hit myself over the head and drown, and he took out the toilet paper so I couldn't bend the bars, roll the toilet paper out the window, slide down the roll and have an escape. Obie was makin' sure.

It was about four or five hours later that Alice--(remember Alice? There's a song about Alice.)--Alice came by and, with a few nasty words to Obie on the side, bailed us out of jail, and we went back to the church, had another Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, and didn't get up until the next morning, when we all had to go to court. We walked in, sat down, Obie came in with the twenty-seven 8 x 10 colored glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, sat down. Man came in, said, "All rise!" We all stood up, and Obie stood up with the twenty-seven 8 x 10 colored glossy pictures, and the judge walked in, sat down, with a seein' eye dog and he sat down. We sat down.

Obie looked at the seein' eye dog . . . then at the twenty-seven 8 x 10 colored glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one . . . and looked at the seein' eye dog . . . and then at the twenty-seven 8 x 10 colored glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each on and began to cry. Because Obie came to the realization that it was a typical case of American blind justice, and there wasn't nothin' he could do about it, and the judge wasn't gonna look at the twenty-seven 8 by 10 colored glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explainin' what each one was, to be used as evidence against us. And we was fined fifty dollars and had to pick up the garbage... in the snow.

But that's not what I'm here to tell you about.

I'm here to talk about the draft.

They got a buildin' down in New York City called Whitehall Street, where you walk in, you get injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected! I went down and got my physical examination one day, and I walked in, sat down (got good and drunk the night before, so I looked and felt my best when I went in that morning, 'cause I wanted to look like the All-American Kid from New York City. I wanted to feel like . . . I wanted to be the All-American Kid from New York), and I walked in, sat down, I was hung down, brung down, hung up and all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly things. And I walked in, I sat down, they gave me a piece of paper that said: "Kid, see the psychiatrist in room 604."

I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I wanna kill. I wanna kill! I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth! Eat dead, burnt bodies! I mean: Kill. Kill!" And I started jumpin' up and down, yellin' "KILL! KILL!" and he started jumpin' up and down with me, and we was both jumpin' up and down, yellin', "KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL!" and the sergeant came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall, said "You're our boy". Didn't feel too good about it. Proceeded down the hall, gettin' more injections, inspections, detections, neglections, and all kinds of stuff that they was doin' to me at the thing there, and I was there for two hours... three hours... four hours... I was there for a long time goin' through all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly things, and I was just havin' a tough time there, and they was inspectin', injectin', every single part of me, and they was leavin' no part untouched!

Proceeded through, and I finally came to see the very last man. I walked in, sat down, after a whole big thing there. I walked up, and I said, "What do you want?" He said, "Kid, we only got one question: Have you ever been arrested?" And I proceeded to tell him the story of Alice's Restaurant Massacree with full orchestration and five-part harmony and stuff like that, and other phenomenon.

He stopped me right there and said, "Kid, have you ever been to court?" And I proceeded to tell him the story of the twenty-seven 8 x 10 colored glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one . . .

He stopped me right there and said, "Kid, I want you to go over and sit down on that bench that says 'Group W'." And I walked over to the bench there, and there's... Group W is where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committin' your special crime. There was all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly-lookin' people on the bench there . . . there was mother-rapers . . . father-stabbers . . . father-rapers! FATHER-RAPERS sittin' right there on the bench next to me! And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible and crime fightin' guys were sittin' there on the bench, and the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one . . . the meanest father-raper of them all . . . was comin' over to me, and he was mean and ugly and nasty and horrible and all kinds of things, and he sat down next to me. He said, "Kid, what'd you get?" I said, "I didn't get nothin'. I had to pay fifty dollars and pick up the garbage." He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?" and I said, "Litterin'"' . . . . And they all moved away from me on the bench there, with the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean, nasty things, till I said, "And creatin' a nuisance . . . " And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench talkin' about crime, mother-stabbin', father-rapin', . . . all kinds of groovy things that we was talkin' about on the bench, and everything was fine.

We was smokin' cigarettes and all kinds of things, until the sergeant came over, had some paper in his hand, held it up and said:

"KIDSTHISPIECEOFPAPERSGOTFOURTYSVENPAGESTHIRTYSEVENSENTENCESFIFTYEIGHTWORDSWEWANTTOKNOWTHEDETAILSOFTHECRIMETHETIMEOFTHECRIMEANDANYOTHERKINDOFTHINGYOUGOTTOSAYPERTAININGTOANDABOUTTHECRIMEWEWANTTOKNOWTHEARRESTINGOFFICERSNAMEANDANYOTHERTHINGYOUGOTTOSAY . . ."

And he talked for forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said.
But we had fun fillin' out the forms and playin' with the pencils on the bench there.
I filled out the Massacree with the four-part harmony. Wrote it down there just like it was and everything was fine. And I put down my pencil, and I turned over the piece of paper, and there . . . on the other side . . . in the middle of the other side . . . away from everything else on the other side . . . in parentheses . . . capital letters . . . quotated . . . read the following words:

"Kid, have you rehabilitated yourself?"

I went over to the sergeant. Said, "Sergeant, you got a lot of god-damned gall to ask me if I've rehabilitated myself! I mean . . . I mean . . . I mean that you send . . . I'm sittin' here on the bench . . . I mean I'm sittin' here on the Group W bench, 'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough to join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug."
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind! We're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington"!

And, friends, somewhere in Washington, enshrined in some little folder, is a study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason I'm singin' you the song now is 'cause you may know somebody in a similar situation. Or you may be in a similar situation, and if you're in a situation like that, there's only one thing you can do: Walk into the shrink wherever you are, just walk in, say, "Shrink, . . . you can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant", and walk out.

You know, if one person, just one person, does it, they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And if three people do it! Can you imagine three people walkin' in, singin' a bar of "Alice's Restaurant" and walkin' out? They may think it's an organization! And can you imagine fifty people a day? I said FIFTY people a day . . . walkin' in, singin' a bar of "Alice's Restaurant" and walkin' out? Friends, they may think it's a MOVEMENT, and that's what it is: THE ALICE'S RESTAURANT ANTI-MASSACREE MOVEMENT! . . . and all you gotta do to join is to sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar. With feelin'.

You can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant

You can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant

Walk right in, it's around the back

Just a half a mile from the railroad track

You can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant

Sorry!

I'm a very bad, probably very boring blogger. It's not that I haven't thought about my blog growing stale over the last couple of weeks. It's just that I haven't thought of anything really worthy of imortalization on screen.

Lessee . . . Dad came to visit. Which means we survived the panic clean beforehand, even though my 19 year old vaccuum cleaner tried to committ hari-kari, and Lucas decided that while he was happy to give up his bed for his grandfather and sleep on the couch, he thought it would be pretentious to act so out of character as to clean his room. "I'm a teenage boy, and Grandpa knows this, Mom." End result: Rick installed a new closet bar, a new bookcase and a new hamper in there. I installed a new bedding set & pillow, vacc'd, shoveled, and did my best to wash the windows. (That western light really shows off the cat nose prints in the evening. I kept telling myself that Dad would only be seeing morning light in there, anyway.)

Also, had my fifth, yes, fifth root canal last Friday. I started getting nervous when I did the inital exam. The dentist took one look at my x-rays and said, "We're going to be getting to know each other." Oh, good. But he's a nice guy, and even though an infection in the bone below the [dead] nerve kept me popping pills for a few days, it worked out in the end. And the nitrous didn't hurt either - although Rick was nagging me to sneak an extra shot of it into a bottle for his car.

And then I replaced my winter jacket, since it was starting to get cold and my old berber fleece job was really looking worn and thin. I picked out a standard looking parka with a fur trim collar, and thought it was adequate and (at $80 on sale) within my budget. It was nice when I got out of swimming class on Monday to feel the soft fur against my face. But on Sunday, Tasha noticed that it was really nice fur - too nice. So we checked the label, and discovered that it was real!! Ewwwww . . . . I should have checked, but it never occurred to me that such a reasonably priced jacket would have genuine dead animal attached.

Now, don't get me wrong. I wear leather and wool, eat eggs and dairy, and serve meat to my family without a qualm. But fur has just too much baggage associated with it, and it's something I can easily do without. And it's kind of disgusting, in my humble opinion. Like I said, "dead animal." But this is the great part - I called Kohls and explained the issue, and they took back my week-old jacket with no tags and gave me a full refund. Cool. And then I found another jacket, with very nice fake fur around the collar, for $20 less - which gave me the opportunity to participate in their clearance rack and take home a neat lace-print skirt, which I'm wearing proudly today. So, a win all around. (And it was really nice of Kohls to work with my quirky value set and take the jacket back like that.)

Um, what else? I'm knitting like crazy to finish Christmas projects in time for the big Thanksgiving family gathering in Michigan. Still to go: about 1/2 of the final sock, and some nose warmers for the little guys. (Curious? Check knitty.com and check the pattern archive for "nose warmers." They're a hoot!)

So that's the major developments, more or less. Just another day in the life. (Or a couple of weeks, actually. Again, sorry about that.) And since every blog entry should have a photo or two, and since I really don't have anything pertinent to show, I'm going to resort to that famous standard of blogs everywhere: cat pictures. Enjoy.

Victory Garden

There used to be this show on Public TV, back when I was a kid, called "The Victory Garden." I don't remember much about it, other than this old coot who grew absolutely enormous tomatoes. It was usually a pretty clear signal that it was time to turn the dial (back in those pre-clicker days) and find something more interesting. Say, UnderDog.

Then last spring a couple of teens from the church brought me a proposal for a community garden. It was great! They'd researched possible crops, and growing techniques, and rounded up a team of their friends to share the labor, and were all ready to build this garden and do something really neat for the community. The church had been making noises for years about how great it would be do to something like this, if only we had a team of people interested in taking charge of it. So I figured, Bingo! We made plans to rent a sod cutter and buy some seeds, and I went to the church council with the plans. Council thought it was just great, too, and I told the girls that we were ready to get started. Somehow, we started to call it the Victory Garden. Aside from the guy with the huge tomatoes, I seem to remember this was something people did in World War II, planting a garden in their yard to increase production for the war effort. So now we're making war on hunger - get it?

But then human nature crept in. Council wanted the Administration Committee to bless the project too, since it did involve "buildings and grounds" and there had been some previous squabbling about who among the church committees were in charge of "buildings and grounds." Admin was worried that a garden wouldn't look nice, and then someone felt they'd been insulted, and then nothing happened at all for weeks and weeks, then someone thought the whole thing had been approved ("Didn't we tell you?"), and then someone else said that they needed to consider it for another month or so . . . . And then we were way past spring, into the drought part of summer, and the original team of teens had thrown up their hands in disgust and walked away. A completely justified move, in my opinion. But the battle lines had changed in our little war, and I thought it profoundly depressing.

But I'm stubborn. (You knew that about me, right?) So even when it became clear that 2007 was not going to be a gardening year, I hated to give up the whole thing. And when a couple of others on Council took up the banner and marched forward again, I fell into step. So two weeks ago Council and Admin sat down at the same table to work some things out, and we all agreed that we are going to do this garden. We made an announcement in church, and showed the landscaping plan off to a few people, and started to get enthusiastic responses. Scott Haefs had run a sod cutter before, and was willing to take charge of that effort. Steve Klock knows a lot about planting sustainable landscapes through his work at the DNR. Kurt K. (whose last name I solemnly pledge to learn soon) has a source for a couple of donated 100 gallon rain barrels and is designing a soaker system for the garden.

I'm still a little intimidated by the amount of work involved. I mean, I'm going to have to figure out exactly how this should all be organized - who will work each garden plot, the logistics of getting food delivered once it has been grown and harvested, etc., etc., etc. And frankly, I'm not much of a gardener.

Also, I'm starting to shy away from the "Victory Garden" name. I don't want to battle other people to make this happen. I want it to be a place of sunshine and harmony and common goals.

But doesn't it look nice, with the sun shining on the newly turned sod?

On the merits of recreation

Rick is a classic over-commiter. For the 20 years or so I've known him, he's always had half a dozen things going on the side, whether it be painting a car for a friend or building a set of cabinets for a kitchen re-model. Even when he was out of the country, doing temporary duty in Greece for 6 weeks, he took along materials to build me a beautiful dresser-style jewelery box in his spare time. And for years he had "disciples" who would show up in the driveway each weekend to work on their vehicles and benefit from his guidance.


But in the last several years, he's been working too hard. He turned the various decks and cabinetry work into a part-time business, and spent all his spare time pushing to finish this project or that one. I've tried to distract him at times for the sake of his own sanity, encouraging him to go to a race or putter with a project of his own. But most of the time he has put himself under too much pressure and feels the need to keep slaving on the crisis of the moment.


Back when the kids were little, Rick was bit by the RC aircraft bug. He had a wonderful time designing and building a plane for himself, before descovering that his creation was not particularly stable in the air and not suitable for a novice flyer. And then he bought a trainer aircraft and found a friend with a "buddy box" who could link up two different radios, allowing one person to take control in an emergency while the other was learning to fly. But that was back in Savannah, and when we moved away from the friend with the buddy box, the plane when on the shelf (and eventually out the door).


Anyway, it turns out that the gas station just down the highway from our house has a whole RC shop in the back, and the owner has arranged for a spot where RC aircraft can be flown on the weekend. This was enough to inspire Rick to buy a new kit and start construction on a new aircraft 4 or 5 years ago . . . but again, he got overcommitted in other directions, and the interest got put on the back shelf (along with his partially completed airplane).


Well, now it's his birthday. I have been nagging him again that birthday gift money should be spent on something you wouldn't normally buy for yourself, something special that will bring you joy. And for once, he took me seriously. He pulled his half-finished aircraft off the shelf, and went out and bought some stuff to finish it. He's started talking about how Jay from work has a buddy box, and maybe he can get back to the challenge of learning how to fly. He asked for a 4 channel control radio as his birthday gift from me and the kids, and then looked like a kid in a candy store when he actually got it.

Okay, so a few chores around the house might be delayed, and some income might be diverted. But it's high time that Rick did something just for the pure fun of it. He's excited and inspired. And I'm good with that.