frost on the punkin*

    From 80 degree weather on Sunday to below freezing on this morning! What a system-shocking change... and upon leaving home this morning, I realized I was not dressed appropriately. I had to make a call home to have my sons bring my coat.     Have I ever said how I hate to wear a coat? I do. Especially in a car. Especially when driving. One of the great pleasures of the past five winters living here in south Mississippi is the joy of not having to wear a coat. And not having to tote around a coat once you are inside overly hot buildings.     Though I must say I was freezing in every building I was in today -- could have had something to do with the light-weight clothing I was wearing.     Bah-hum-bug on this cold weather.     BUT! Huzzah (as they kept shouting at the ren-faire yesterday) for Best Buy having my laptop ready to pick up tonight! I got my "baby-back-baby-back-baby-back." LC *I love this poem. My dad used to recite it to us, along with a couple of other James Whitcomb Riley poems (Raggedy Man, Little Orphant Annie among them). But in my college children's literature class (32 years ago), the professor suddenly developed a dislike for me after learning this fact... to the point of accusing me of plagerizing my children's story from another student (even though I had turned in mine first) and failing me for the class. I was too naive then to know that I could have fought it. I always assumed she thought me some kind of racist; which made no sense to me. The dialect of Riley's poems always struck me as just good ol' country folk.

having a heat wave

    Wow! Is it ever warm in southern Mississippi today. Not summer-warm, and not exactly winter-warm either. That probably doesn't make much sense, but if you've ever enjoyed the mildness of a southern winter day, you might understand. The weather today, however, just feels like something very unusual.     And it's another slow day at work. Or perhaps just a typical Saturday (I only work two Saturdays a month). Daytime weekday shift hours keep us much busier! We all get paid the same, but night and weekend workers get lots more playtime.     Speaking of work, I don't think I am going to next semester. I see lots of reading, research and writing time in my future. Perhaps I can come back to work for the summer term.     I've taken photos of the yarn Rissa and I dyed last month along with a few inches of swatching -- but neither of my sons has yet remembered to download and forward them to me by email, so I can't post them. Soon. I promise. It is really pretty.     The pattern I want to adapt (Fiber Trends' Estonia Garden) arrived. I'm going to need some help with the conversion, I think. I may have to get hold of the book that makes the Faroese type from neck down, as that is the way the FT pattern is designed.     Oh! The last whiney post I made, I forgot to mention the final straw that actually sent me to the keyboard: I measured the length of one skein's worth of knitting the alternating seed stitch pattern with the alpaca/silk and found it to be only three inches, where the straight stitching had given me five inches!! I am NOT buying any more of this yarn! So, I ripped back to four inches of pattern stitching and returned to the stockinette for the rest of the body. I'll make a similar border of the seed stitch pattern on the sleeves.     Under making lemonade from lemons, I decided that it was a good time to force myself to learn continental style. So far so good. Not only does it seem quicker, but it appears my stitching is more even -- I have to watch not to work to tightly though.     You'll notice the Boycott China logo now on my blog... though I wonder if it is truly possible to totally boycott Chinese products. Even if one watches lables, how can one know if the raw materials originated in China? I would especially like to see a boycott of the 2008 Olympics. "Oh, but the atletes have trained so hard," some might say... how many Tibetan and Chinese and Mongolian and other lives is that bronze, silver or gold medal worth?? Not a single one. Better than a boycott of the Olympics though, would be an end to the bruality, the torture and the oppression of the Chinese and Tibetan people. LC