I'm moving at the end of the month, and I've accumulated a lot of stuff in the last six years. Some of it is yarn! It falls into two categories: stuff I'll give you for the cost of shipping, and stuff I'd like to get at least some cash for.

Category one: Yours for the cost of shipping.
1. Plymouth Encore Worsted Weight yarn, color 240 (Oatmeal). Four skeins. -- karakara98

2. Wool-Ease worsted weight yarn, color 138 (Cranberry). Two skeins, one wound into a ball. -- karakara98

3. Knit Picks Essential sock yarn, 1 skein, blue. -- digitalemur

4. Knit Picks Essential sock yarn, 2 skeins, red, one wound into a ball, plus part of a third skein balled up. -- digitalemur

5. Knit Picks Essential sock yarn, 2 skeins, green, one wound into a ball. -- digitalemur

6. Rowan Felted Tweed, 1 ball, color 142 (light purple/pinkish).

7. KnitPicks Merino Style, 1 ball, color dusk. -- karakara98

8. Assorted wool and cotton odds and ends.


Yarn I'd like to get something back for:
1. Cascade 220 Superwash. Four skeins and a half of purple (color 805) I can throw in the swatches to make a full fifth skein, if you want to unravel them, and one of white. $35. It goes for $9.80/skein usually.

2. Rowan Kid Classic. 2 skeins (color 847, cherry red). $15. It goes for >$10/skein.

3. Rowan Tapestry. 5 skeins (color 176, whirlpool). $35. Bought it for $9.50/skein.

4. Knit Picks Alpaca Cloud Lace Yarn, color Autumn Heather. 2 skeins, wound into balls. $5.00. -- karakara98

5. Reynolds Lopi, grey, one and a half skeins. $5.00.

I'm sure most people have seen Advanced Cat Yodeling by now.

Felix, the cat who belongs to the boy's roommate, is a perfect yodeling cat. He squawks and mrows and generally makes his displeasure heard but not felt. My cat, Clio, is the antithesis of a yodeling cat. She sits patiently in your arms and ignores you, until she's out of patience, at which point she politely puts her teeth on your hand or arm, and hops down. (Tried this once, haven't tried it again: she's not a very vocal cat at most times, anyway.)

Have any of you all tried this with your cats?

This weekend was very busy and very relaxing. We went to see the Wolverine movie on Friday night (it was fun, but not great: we had fun talking it over and nitpicking comics timelines etc. afterwards) went to NYC to see friends on Saturday, had brunch with several people this morning and just watched Blues Brothers with almost half a dozen people who hadn't seen it before. (The number of cars destroyed in that movie is absurd, and I love Aretha Franklin.)

People-ful!

And I managed to finish a pair of socks and get some yarn 3-plied and wound off into a skein. The jumbo head on an Ashford holds an awful lot of yarn: the skein is enormous: about 400 yards, if my math is right and my niddy-noddy does 2 yard skeins. :)

This fall, I'll be going to Indiana University in Bloomington, getting an MLS with a focus on rare books.

It was actually a hard decision, picking one school instead of just saying "But you're all awesome!" None of the schools I was considering were a bad choice: they were all just different kinds of good choices. But Bloomington won in the end, and I'm now simultaneously looking forward to being out there and wanting to slow down the calendar just a bit to spend more time hanging out with cool people here on the east coast before I go.

I'll be in town until the end of July, and after that I hope to do a little bit of traveling and maybe a little road-tripping, if the price of gas stays as stupidly low as it is right now.

This week: Red velvet cupcakes and sour cream coffee cake.

Sour cream coffee cake I make every few months, just the Joy of Cooking recipe. But I always forget that it's meant to be poured into a 9x9 pan and put it into loaf pans, and then have to bake it longer than the book says. But it still tastes good, and I make up extra topping and put some in the middle, walnuts and brown sugar and cinnamon that winds in a little ribbon.

I'd never made red velvet cupcakes or red velvet cake before, but I had one at my basketry class a few weeks ago, and it was tasty. Rationally, I know that the red food coloring does nothing whatsoever to the taste or texture of red velvet cupcakes. (And it's a little frustrating to run out of red food coloring so quickly.) But they're just so red and pretty! I'll probably still reduce the amount of red next time. My right thumb is splattered pink, which is a little funny-looking.

Frosting:
I just made cream cheese frosting in a food processor. I am NEVER making frosting by hand again -- you just put the cream cheese and butter and powdered sugar in, press the pulse button a few times, and you have frosting, without having gotten it all over your shirt and jeans and counter and floor and cat. (Well, assuming you put the lid on.) If I didn't already love my food processor, this would clinch it.

Mmmm, baking. What have you baked or eaten recently that was tasty?

If you have the chance, go see Coraline in 3-D. It definitely is a movie that will be good on both the big and small screens, but it was stunning in 3-D and apparently something is coming out this weekend that will take over most of the 3-D screens. So if you want to see it, see it now.

Coraline, based on the book by Neil Gaiman, is a really fun, very gorgeous movie. The plot is simple: Coraline Jones and her parents move into an old, Victorian house. Its other inhabitants (Misses Spink and Forcible, old vaudeville stars with too many terriers and rather old toffee, and Mr. B, an eccentric old man who is training his mice to go "Ooompah-ooompah instead of toodle-toodle") are not exactly the best playmates for a girl Coraline's age, and when it rains all day, she explores the house, counting doors and windows and discovering a little, half-height door in the living room. Sometimes it's bricked up, and sometimes it leads to ... her house. Except that her other mother makes all the foods Coraline likes, and the mouse circus is great fun, and Coraline's other parents pay a great deal of attention to her. There's just one hitch: they all have buttons for eyes.

If you'd like to see a huge singing garden all come to life in beautiful, lit-up and gorgeous stop-motion, go see it.

If you're tired of seeing movies that put children in peril and require adults to go save them, go see it.

If you're looking for a fun, visually appealing movie that will make you walk out feeling a little better, go see it.

If you are a knitter? Look at those little yellow gloves. Now think about this: Coraline is doll-sized herself. Those gloves were knit by hand with needles the size of a human hair. How bad-ass is that?

About a half hour ago, at midnight, very catlike sounds of distress started to come from my building's lobby/hallway. My apartment is just off the stairs on the second floor, so I can hear things that go on downstairs pretty well. I grew up with this kind of ambient noise, so as long as it's not accompanied by really loud voices or annoying music at unreasonable hours, it's just background -- I tune it out.

But cat noises were a new one -- I know other people in the building have cats, but I have never heard one before. Clio perked up and came out from hiding under my bed (she's been mad at me for going to work and leaving her All Alone All Day Long this week) and started to investigate the noise. I wanted to see what was going on, but didn't want her making a dash for the door, so I picked her up onto my shoulder, opened the door, and took a step into the hallway. I waved at another neighbor who was also peering down the hallway (who may have assumed that my cat caused the noises) and stepped towards the stairs down to the lobby.

And Clio clawed her way down over my shoulder, down my back, and BOLTED for the apartment door, pausing only once she was several feet IN to look back at me over her bottle-brush tail and then dash under my bed again.

Apparently I don't need to worry about her getting out and getting hit by a car. She's too scared of the hallway to get past it to the stairs, lobby or front doors.

Had several people over this afternoon to decorate sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies, which was a lot of fun. The cookies were a lot smaller than the ones I made last year, so the decorations were less detailed.

Still, one person made a very detailed Charlie Brown, and documented its tasty demise, and another made a series of gingerbread people in swimsuits, which led to Michael Phelps and several fencers being doodled up, complete with mini-M&M medals.

One gingerbread man got a little squished in the transfer between counter and sheet, so I made myself a slightly-unmatched pair of cookies. (In dress green uniforms. Cookies for anyone who can tell me who they were.)

Hello, everyone! I'm going to be sending out holiday cards in a few weeks, and I can't find my address book. I suspect it is at my parents' house, where it will do me absolutely no good. (I can just see it, huddling in a pile of books at the foot of my tallest overfull bookcase. Its plots to destroy holiday-card-sending must be foiled!)

If you would like to get a card this winter, please leave your address in a comment on this entry.

All comments are screened, so nobody but me can see your address and come stalk you send you mail. (Incidentally, I promise not to stalk you. I doubt a police record would go over very well on grad school applications.)

Turns out Obama's name works as a Mayan glyph. I kind of want this tote bag.

President-elect Barack Obama.

I am so damn proud and happy and hopeful right now.

I am so glad that this is possible, that I was awake and aware and around for this. I am so glad that the election wasn't won by a scrape and a hair. I am so glad that yes, we can. We can elect the first African-American president. We can win an election with truth and calm conversation and canvassing and community organizing. We can elect a president who talks about service and sacrifice and the long road ahead and gets cheered for his honesty.

And, as several people said just after Obama's speech: What next?

Reading on the way to work:
Armchair pilgrimage, which saints to invoke for good harvests, for choking, and to get a calm sea, and what naming can tell you about saints (usually? not so much.)

In German class:
"On the coat of arms of the city of Berlin, one sees a standing bear, and he is crowned with a golden crown, as if [he were] a king! The bear is altogether the symbol of the quickly expanding capital of Germany." (And, yes, I did have to re-type that a few Times to take out the capitalized Nouns.)

At work:
What is Wrong with Marriage, This Earth of Ours, The Hard-boiled Virgin, The Captain's Doll... and a bunch more 1930s titles, all released by Albert & Charles Boni in paperback.

Tonight:
More about the seal of Berlin, more about saints, and (as a break) some on the history of illuminated manuscripts, and the third presidential debate.

And, dammit, the cat's drinking my milk.

Hooray, books:
I learned what a pyx is today (it's a container used to carry the Host.)

Hooray, google:
Where can you get one? AQUINAS and MORE dot com. No, really.

(First seen via cicer.

"Freedom of conscience is not to be surrendered upon issuance of a medical degree" --Michael Leavitt, Health and Human Services Secretary.

Federal Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said the proposal is intended to protect practitioners who have moral objections to abortion, and wouldn't interfere with patients' ability to get contraceptives—but the ACLU challenged that interpretation."

If this goes through, doctors will have the right to deny medical care related (vaguely) to abortion because of their personal moral objections. Its wording is fuzzy enough that if a doctor decided to deny a woman birth control pills, or emergency contraception to a rape victim, it would probably be a protected decision.

That's right. If your doctor doesn't like abortion, and decides to deny you a prescription for RU486, or declines to perform an abortion for you, that's his or her decision, and if you deny a doctor that, you're abridging his/her first amendment right to free speech.

This legislation would force all medical facilities that receive government funding to promise that they wouldn't fire doctors or nurses for refusing to do their jobs based on moral objections.

Now, I don't know about you, but I happen to think that access to doctors who have to do their jobs is a good thing. I also happen to be pro-choice, and think that this is yet another attempt to make large stretches of America essentially pro-life by fiat. It doesn't matter how "legal" it is, if there's no doctor within driving distance of your house who does abortions, you're having a baby. If doctors can get away with refusing medical services because of moral objections to those services, an awful lot of doctors are going to refuse to perform abortions. (See today's NYTimes article about how hard it is to get an abortion in Mexico City for an example of some of the problems you face when a medical service is legal but either poorly funded or poorly staffed.)

For more information, check out maho_kiwi's post here, which is where I found this link to a PDF of the regulation and also has tips on how to contact the right people to register your opinion.

And if you find any more news articles about this, please let me know: it took me a while to dig up anything on this, and I didn't find anything but AP coverage of it, which makes me uncomfortable: I prefer to get my reporting on major (to me) issues from at least two sources. Most of the "abortion" news is about Obama and how he'll lose because Biden is pro-choice. (And that's a whole different set of head-desks, right there, but let's leave those alone for now.)

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush

( List continues )

Looks like I've got some cultural gaps in my eating habits: anything made of mixed up organ meats I probably haven't tried, and I need to try more eastern european, caribbean and asian foods. Oh, and snake. But overall, not terrible -- I don't consider myself terribly adventurous about food, so I'm not displeased.

Edit: Yes, I have had Huevos Rancheros. Duh. Several other edits, with things that I'm unsure about italicized.

The Olympics are wreaking havoc with my sleep schedule. Stupid 12-hour-time difference. I'm about to go to bed, but first I have to tear myself away from men's gymnastics. It's actually quite interesting, because people are making mistakes, which makes the impressive stuff more impressive.

(Or, as hellpossum just said: "These guys are fucking up!")

I don't really understand NBC's obsession with swimmers, though. I'm happy to see us win, but I'd love to see men's volleyball, or equestrian, or fencing, or any of a half dozen other sports.

Finally: the US women's beach volleyball team KICKS ASS. They are awesome incarnate, and it is so much fun to watch their games. They are just such amazing athletes. And unlike the time I saw them at Coney Island, the announcers are treating them like athletes, not like OMGHAWTGIRLS. It's refreshing.

...is that it falls off the shelf when you pull out a book. And lands in the cat's water dish.

Ew. Soggy yarn.

This summer, I've been bitten hard by the gardening bug, which has actually been a lot of fun. I learned to garden from my mom when I was small, and I've always found it very relaxing: I just plain enjoy playing in the dirt. (Even weeding can be relaxing if I'm in the right mood. *This is a good thing. Otherwise the entire garden would be overcome by nightshade, which is a sneaky, sturdy little bastard. I pick about a bushel of it a week, and we don't have more than an 8-10 foot deep border of garden around the house.)

This summer, my mom has taken a little more time off from work (Work-free weekends! The blasphemy!) and we've spent some time planning the garden together. We've split up the garden pretty nicely: I'm more or less in charge of the veggies and the herb garden, with some tomato and lettuce input from her, and she's in charge of the ornamental flower garden along the fence, though I did a rock-bordered bed under a pair of trees. I find vegetables a little more fulfilling than flowers, because not only do they look nice (I like healthy plants, though I'll admit to a soft spot for good lilies) they also feed you! (I admit that being able to know exactly what's in my food also motivated me a bit, and bananaplants and llyrwellyn have been good encouragement, too.)

My mom spent time planning the flower gardens, and then bought the plants from a local garden supply place; I tried to start my veggies from seeds. I started basil and zucchini seeds on my windowsill, and tried to start some rosemary, lavender and chives. The herbs were for my apartment, not the house garden, and good thing, too: they weren't as successful as I might have hoped.

The rosemary came up, but it's still straggling in little bits, so no cooking with it just yet for me. The chives are being cranky about the sunlight being so directional, and have been dying off and re-growing in droves. I never had this problem with outdoor chives in an herb garden, but in the pot, they grow for a certain amount and then just die, and go all papery-brown on me. Any tips?

The lavender was almost a complete failure: oh well! I think my mother has never had much luck with it either, so maybe the inability to grow lavender goes in the family. :)

But the basil and zucchini took off like crazy, and I planted about a dozen basil plants and a few more than half a dozen zucchini plants at my parents' place, where I can check on them each weekend, but not very easily during the week. I figured that with only once-weekly attention, some of them would probably die. Then it rained nice as can be the week after I planted them, and all of the plants took root and thrived. And then my dad put in a timed soaker hose, and that just spelled doom for my "let nature weed them out" plan. Now we've got mounds of zucchini plants that are almost waist high, and for the last two weekends I've been out of town. My dad offered to check on them for me, and said he'd pick them as soon as they were big enough to eat.

( The first zucchini of the year. Pick them at eight inches, I said. )

...well. That was unnecessary.

( Someone wanted to go out with a bang. Spoilers below and in comments. )

From orichalcum and apintrix. Go here: http://quotationspage.com/random.php3. Pick your favorite five quotations (refresh the page for more.)

What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be.
Clementine Paddleford

One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 - 1962)

I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965), The Painted Veil, 1925

Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.
Sophia Loren (1934 - )