Who left the window open?

To put it mildly, this has been a cold week indeed. On Thursday and Friday I opted to work from home because of the BLIZZARD WARNINGS AND ALL, and on Friday my dog was gracious enough to permit me to stay inside until just after noon. The howling winds piled up drifts around my car, twisted the old maple trees to some alarming creaking, and really made us regret that we had only insulated two small windows on the house this year. The wind chills plunged to -38°F for about two days.

Those windows that we insulated did not include the west-facing and north-facing windows of my bedroom. For four nights in a row I retreated to my bed at the end of the evening and tried to make a pocket of air under my covers that would help me stay alive until the morning. Yesterday our energy supplier requested that we lower our thermostat to somewhere between 60° and 62°F to ease the burden on the power grid while a supplier fixed some broken equipment. I was greatly relieved to move the thermostat back up to 68°F this morning with their blessing.

Fortunately, the Forester started right up on Saturday morning despite the fact that snow had drifted around it and packed the front wheel wells.

My mom: “He looks so cold!”

Not taking out the trash for a while…

This morning I woke and realized that I didn’t hear any wind. My weather app assured me that the 19 mph winds made it feel like -17°F outside, but compared to what we had already been through it felt like a sunny day.

Now. Those of us in my generation still remember the Blizzard of 1977 and the yards of snow it piled up and drifted for us to deal with for weeks when we were unable to make it to the roads, let alone go to school. This was not the same. But I could have done without one Nextdoor posting after another telling me that this was not a real blizzard and the folks these days were soft. Let me just say that I hope their words were not responsible for the death of anyone going out on the roads when they didn’t need to. I spent a couple of days watching the straight-line winds absolutely scour my east-to-west road and being grateful that I wasn’t required to go anywhere. And then I made another cup of coffee and counted my many blessings.

I coped by knitting on several projects (see below), baking two batches of cookies, cooking a huge batch of beef chili, and starting a book (reading, not writing, although if the temperature dips again….). I made a list of mini-tasks that I could check off whenever I found the time. I went outside the bare minimum of necessary times (Monty, sometimes I wish that you were a cat) and wore as many layers as I could. The house trick in cold weather has been to toss the blankets or the comforter into the dryer for a few minutes just before bedtime; this was the first time I’ve done that to my long robe at the start of the day. Even then, the zipper cooled off before I had the chance to worry about burning my skin on it.

As the meme said, if there was something you had sworn to do when Hell froze over, you were scheduled to do it this weekend. But all of the things I’m planning to do in the coming year are things that I’ll need to start planning now.

It will soon be 2023. That indicates that 2024 and 2025 are in the near future and not as far off as we think. SecondSon estimates that they’ll graduate from college in Spring 2024. I should get my Master’s degree in Fall 2025. MiddleSon and Youngest may be in college at those times. And who knows what Eldest may be up to by then?

The future is coming. Be prepared!

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Knitwise, this week I pushed myself a little and was able to make progress on all three current knitting projects. For two of the projects, progress is measurable only in inches: the Vintage Packer scarf is now 33 inches long, and the blue blanket is about 28 inches long. I will be joining to a full skein of yarn sometime in the next row of the blanket, and I should be able to chug along whenever I have time to knit.

For the ombre slouch hat, I cast on 112 stitches last week (Tuesday or Wednesday), then joined the round and knit almost all of the ribbing on Thursday. On Friday I was able to knit up to the chart of colorwork, and on Saturday I knitted the first two rounds of the chart and started on row 3. I’m carrying both colors along with every stitch, so I’m twisting the yarns however it looks like it will work. (Don’t look, Lori.)

The Shetland yarn is rather fine and scratchy, so it’s not quick knitting — especially the way I knit (I’m a thrower). So the color chart is just something I’ll have to plug along with for a few rows a day. If my hands get too tight on the US 2 needles I can switch to one of the other projects; the scarf is on US 9s and the blanket is on US 15s. I think this hat’s going to look pretty nice by the time I get to the other end of the chart. Nice enough that I’ll want to make another one right away? We’ll see.

With the new year almost upon us, it might be time for me to finally jump on some sort of temperature blanket bandwagon when I’m ready to start a new project. If you have a pattern or color scheme to suggest, please leave it in the comments. Keep in mind that Wisconsin temperatures can range from -40°F to 100+°F; I might need the whole rainbow and some heathers to bridge the gaps.

The way the weather is going, you might want to learn to knit, too. Let me know if you need some yarn.

A little light

The snow is arriving, the geese are (finally!) departing, and every bit of light we can produce is a Good Thing. I’m doing my part by lighting one more candle each night, but there are many ways to add a bit of light to the world.

Support your family. Hug your grandmother. Use your grandfather’s tools. Call your mother. Think about the values that were important to your father. Pray for your cousins’ health.

Support your friends. Chat with the friend who wants to quit smoking, with the one whose home business needs a bit more signal boost, with the one whose resume needs your careful edit before they apply for that cool new job.

Support your cyber folk. Share the thoughtful post, tag the friend who was looking for exactly the product you just saw an ad for, give a heart or an upvote or a like to that post that says just the right thing under the circumstances. Wish them a happy birthday even if you’ve never met them in real life and probably never will.

Support your neighbors. Shovel the snow, watch the property, pick up the mail. Take over a dozen cookies or so – no nuts, just in case. Bring a bottle of wine to the party. Offer to pick something up from the store or give them a referral to the good plumber.

Support yourself, too. Be your own best friend. Make time for doing some of the things that bring you joy or restore your soul. Brew the tea from the leaves. Open that book you have looked forward to reading. Light that scented candle. Oil that squeaking hinge that annoys you.

Not all of us can be big lights, but we can all be little lights. Sometimes it is one little light that makes all the difference.

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Knitwise, I have made Actual Progress on the new project this week. I kept increasing by one stitch in each row for the entire first full skein, then switched to “straight ahead” mode for the next skein, which was just a partial skein. I didn’t weigh it before I started using it, but I can do a little math after I finish using the second full skein and allow for the weight of the knitting needles and estimate how much it was. Then I’ll use the last full skein to decrease down to the end point (k1, k2tog, YO, k2tog, k to end), and that’s it except for the Weaving-in of the Ends.

Last night I took the project to a “dinner and a movie” event and knitted all but 15 grams or so of the partial skein. At this point it measures 26 inches deep from the point to the “live” row of stitches. That’s about 21 inches for the first skein and 4 more inches for the partial. If I’m correct in guessing that the partial was a third of a skein, the whole piece should measure 21 (increasing end) + 4 (partial) + 12 (whole) + 21 (decreasing end) inches, for about 58 inches. That’s going to be a rather cuddly wrap.

How wide is it? Well, that is hard to say right now. The stitches are bunched up on the shortish circular needles, and I can’t stretch out the work without popping it off the needles. That Would Be Bad. So I will need to knit for quite a while on the next whole skein before I will be able to stretch out the straight middle portion to its full width. And by that time I might be ready to start the decreases — after which it will get progressively easier to know how wide the middle part is. So, we shall know the answer in the fulness of time, and it’s not worth worrying about.

I haven’t start knitting a potato yet, but recently I was given the gift of more eyes.

I did add one more set of stripes to the Vintage Packer scarf, but mostly it’s just sitting in the basket until I have a home-based TV knitting project.

Projects waiting in the wings:

Llama Una Slouch Hat in Jamieson’s Shetland Spindrift (Sand and Loganberry)

Same pattern in Brown alpaca and natural wool, sources unknown

Pillow cover in Blue Sky Fibers Woolstock (Spring Ice, Loon Lake, Dark Chocolate)

Tree of Life fingerless gloves in Classic Elite Woodland wool/nettles (Fern)

Stick to Your Ribs ear warmer in Manos de Uruguay purples and mystery yarn black

Any suggestions? Any nudges in a particular direction? (Be warned that nudges may receive pushback.)

When one book closes another opens

The first graduate course has come to a bittersweet end after two reflection papers, a student affairs interview, sharing of multiple current events, a trip to Boxes and Walls, participation in a Chancellor Search open forum, a visit from a UW Regent (and other illustrious in-person and Webex guests), and a collaborative presentation and paper on a local university. Together my classmates and I read two books, several book chapters, and many scholarly papers and received an introduction to APA style.

No, not that kind of style. This kind of style!

I’ve been addicted to stylebooks since my first copy of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style (third edition with index). My mother, when she went to graduate school as a nontraditional student (though we didn’t call her that in the 1980s), had a battered copy of “Turabian” that was her Bible. (A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, by Kate L. Turabian. It seems to be up to the 9th edition by now, but Mom used the 3rd or 4th edition; I’ll have to ask her but I suspect it was the 4th.) The Turabian guide was so frequently cited that a 2016 survey of college syllabi found that Kate Turabian was the most commonly assigned female author.

If you haven’t been embedded in the universe of professional writing for the last three decades as I have, allow me to introduce you to the major stylebooks for different categories of professional writing:

• Newspapers (remember those?) use the Associated Press Stylebook, or AP style. The 2020-2022 edition is the 55th print edition.

• Book publishers refer to the Chicago Manual of Style, or Chicago Style, CMOS, or just “Chicago.” The 2017 edition is the 17th edition.

• Magazines don’t have an industry standard, so they create their own “house style” books from a combination of what makes sense for them from CMOS and AP Style. (It’s fun. Ask me how I know.)

• Scholarly work can use MLA [Modern Language Association], APA, or another style particular to the field of study.

I have a lot of APA style ahead of me; the next course is Diversity and Equity in Higher Education and I have just ordered copies of my textbooks. My APA Publication Manual still looks pristine but it should be wiped out by the time I finish the program. But hey! Several of my classmates from this semester will also be in the new course.

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Knitwise, I have been casting on for everything. These days I look at the yarn that overflows from stash with a more critical eye. Knit it Up or Pass it On is the new motto (Knit or Get Off the Pot might be a close second). So this week, even though I have yet to knit a potato, I have progress to talk about.

The Vintage Packer scarf received some attention this week and now measures up at 27 inches from cast-on.

See?

Just today I cast on for a whole new project after finding a shopping bag containing 3-1/2 skeins of lovely blue acrylic. The yarn is Yarn Bee Fireside in the Summer Bay colorway, and it’s a Hobby Lobby knockoff of Lion Brand Homespun. (I have absolutely no idea how this yarn came into my possession. All I can tell you for sure is that I didn’t purchase it at Hobby Lobby; the ball band has a 2011 copyright, so I suspect that I got this batch with matching dye lots at Goodwill.) I decided to use what I learned from the Pink Project and knit it up as a Grandmother’s Dishcloth pattern on the ends (starting with k2, YO, k to end; ending with k1, k2tog, YO, k2tog, k to end), with a straight section in the middle (k2, YO, k2tog, k to end).

Doesn’t show much, does it?

Now you can see the eyelets (yarnovers) and border.

As I tidied up in different rooms and tried to rein in the stash, I came across other yarns that I had intended to ship to online friends two years ago before I discovered that overseas yarn shipping was either prohibitively expensive or just plain prohibited (thanks, Australia). With regret I put this yarn back into stash, except for two balls of Shetland wool that practically begged me to knit them into a hat. (Well…okay.) I found a free — and easy! — hat pattern on Ravelry for the Sand and Loganberry yarns I had bought who-knows-when at The Sow’s Ear in Verona.

Super simple colorwork. I’ll try to get a better picture of the Loganberry yarn; it’s a lovely reddish purple.

I also uncovered a bag full of more LaurenSpun wool in pinks and blues. One small skein had the colors arranged consecutively, but the other skeins had the colors plied together. Lauren didn’t remember what she had originally planned to do with the yarn, though she had knitted up a small gauge swatch, but I have about 250 grams of it. The non-plied colors will be reserved for the border of whatever I decide to do with the plied skeins.

What should I be?

That would almost be everything to talk about in the knitting department, but I also came across a small ball of chocolate-brown wool (actually, it is smooth and soft and lovely and might be alpaca) and a smaller ball of natural white wool (definitely wool) that could combine to make a winter hat for Eldest.

WordPress has eliminated (or very cleverly hidden) the word-count feature, so I have no idea if this post is of a proper length for publication. On the other hand, they did supply me with a new writing prompt:

Honestly, I could do less with corporate-supplied writing prompts. Or I could do more with fewer of them. In case you haven’t noticed, WordPress, I’ve been blogging since 2007. My posts have never been contingent upon what you want me to say, and that isn’t going to change now. Gad freaking zooks.

Time Travel Product Reviews

Last month I got frustrated with my bulletin journal habits, or lack of them, and decided to abandon this year’s plan of designing each month’s layout by hand as I went along. Actually, I fell off that particular wagon months ago, with the consequence that now I’m not really keeping tracking of anything with much success. I would check to see exactly when that happened, but right now I’m not exactly sure where my 2022 bulletin journal actually is.

At work my Outlook calendar is up to date, and personal deadlines are scribbled on 3×3 Post-It notes and stuck someplace I’m likely to see them before heading home. And the family dry-erase calendar is current.

But I replaced the personal bullet journal with a pre-printed planner from Rhodia, which has pages suitable for fountain pens. And while I was at the Goulet Pens website to buy the planner, I bought a new fountain pen to go with it. There was a matter of a sale, and free ink in Black Cherry, and there we were. You know how it goes.

I must say that I do enjoy the Goulet Pens buying experience. Their website is nice, they have a range of lovely items, and you can buy a nice pen if you have $30 to spend or $1000. They pack everything carefully (they call it “a slightly ridiculous amount of care”), usually include a company-designed sticker and a Dum Dum pop, ship it quickly, and invite your feedback just on the shipping. They also produce a blog and YouTube product review videos, including the Goulet “Pencast.” They’re fun, knowledgeable, and Good People.

After the purchases come the emails. How do you like your new pen? they ask. What did you think of the ink you recently purchased? That all makes sense. But the email I received on November 28 had me puzzled.

It’s a weekly planner for next year. As I write this, it’s December 4. I have opened the planner, and shown off its gorgeous cover color to everyone in the office, but it’s not as if I have any need to write in it yet.

Do people just jump into next year’s planners when they receive them in mid-November? Find the month that starts on the same day of the week, rename all the months, and get going? (June is December, but June has 30 days and December has 31, so that leaves a 24-hour gap until January is January so then WHAT DO WE DO?) Or maybe they write all of next year’s known events in the planner to help pass the days until next year becomes this year? I suppose that I could write in all of the birthdays I plan to observe, but does anyone do that?

Perhaps I could review it as I know it right now. Well, the cover is a lovely shade of peacock blue, which is why I purchased it, and the calendar pages are printed in orange, which wasn’t really a factor because I had no choice. The elastic band, also in peacock blue, does an acceptable job of keeping the planner closed when it isn’t open. The pages are made of nice paper that ought to work well with my fountain pen when it’s time for me to write in it, but I don’t know since it isn’t time yet. Only 27 days to go!

Or I could write the Terse Factual Review that you see so often at Amazon. Item arrived on schedule, in good condition, was exactly as shown on website.

Or I could write a Useless Review: How would I know its not 2023 you morons, ask me after I had a chanse to use it.

On the other hand, I could get creative. I have a degree in being creative, so why not use it?

6/2/25 — finally time to take a breath and thank you for all the features of the Rhodia 2023 planner. It included just enough space to record all the vague references to the Daleks and put the pieces together in time to thwart what would have been a catastrophic invasion of Earth. Thanks, and you’re welcome! —Love, The Doctor. P.S. my love to Clara; whatever you do, don’t look in mirrors until after 2032. I’ll tell you why later.

1964, 1966, 1967, 1969 — this journal goes well with my 42 pound fountain pen. — Mason Williams

24/8/2004. Good book, bad pen. I got red on me! — Edgar Wright

The English version is rather dull. Have you one in Catalan? — Colm Toibin

Whose dates these are I think I know.
Can’t fill them in ’til next year though.
— Robert Frost

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In other writing-related news, WordPress (always eager to innovate) has taken a page from Facebook in the mid-aughts and decided to supply me with a writing prompt of sorts. Is it only me who finds this rather creepy?

WordPress. Dude. Just give me the tools to write and publish. I’m not asking for “inspiration” or questions about my sleep cycle or my biorhythms. Back off.

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Knitwise, I added precisely one set of color repeats to the Vintage Packers scarf. Two more ridges of green, or more ridge of gold. One inch longer and not photo-worthy. Moving along, moving along.

I did find and download a pattern for a pillow cover I could make with the lovely Blue Sky Fibers yarns I rescued last week. I don’t want to knit a snowflake pattern, but at least I know there are patterns out there for pillow covers using Fair Isle patterns. We’re getting there, step by step.

This weekend I had hoped to stash-dive and find some brown yarn suitable for knitting potatoes. Alas, I have not yet found the time. Maybe it’s behind the planner.