Lunch with SK and Barbara

Wednesday, Barbara and I met up with Shui Kuen and her mother for lunch at Ocean Star, a dim sum restaurant in Alhambra. It was wonderful ~ I love dim sum, but rarely get to eat it, since there aren't many good places for it anywhere near where I live. SK and her mother did all the ordering (no menus, no one seemed to speak English), and they treated us to a terrific array of dishes.

It was great to see SK again, and to see what she's been working on. Barbara had brought both magazines that have SK's work in them, and she was thrilled to see those. SK showed us the Forget-Me-Not shawl she's working on now, knit in Elann's Kid Silk ~ simply gorgeous! She also had with her a terrific cabled cardigan she'd made some time ago ~ although I doubt she's had any chance to wear it here, with our extreme heat.

Barbara brought her Comfort shawl with her ~ it's absolutely gorgeous, and feels yummy as well. Between SK and Barbara, I almost feel compelled to knit a shawl, even though I never wear one and have no use for shawls in SoCal.

After lunch, we all went back to SK's mother's house, where her mother tried to feed us more, and SK brought out all the goodies she's working on. We had a great time, and I regret that SK lives so far away (in the wilds of Canada!) that we rarely get together. If she lived nearer to me, I swear I'd just sit at her feet and learn from her ~ she's one awesome knitter!

I didn't have anything to show, unfortunately. I'd been working in my classroom before I left for the meeting, and I forgot to take anything with me when I left home (before 7 am!). I didn't even remember to bring my camera, so the above were graciously sent to me by Barbara, who did remember to bring hers, although she forgot until we were getting ready to leave. Bless her for sharing.

An Almost FO

I finished the knitting portion of the tank top from Classic Knits last Friday. It takes no time at all to knit, using Big Wool and size 17s. I think I spent a couple of hours on it Thursday night, and finished it Friday evening after I got home from organizing my classroom. It's cute, but it's still not sewn together. I really like the Big Wool Fusion I used ~ it's pink and cream, sort of swirled together, and knits up really nice. I even made it longer than the pattern called for, and made a larger opening for my arms, since this has to be worn over something, not by itself. It's a satisfying very quick knit.


I've been busy at my school, getting my classroom set up for the new year, which begins next week. I'm down to 35 students as of today, from a high of 39 at the beginning of last week. (35 is the max I'm allowed to have, but our district keeps enrolling students even when we've reached our max, thinking they'll shuffle kids once school begins. Ask me how stupid I think that is!) Anyway, I'm pretty much done with setting up, but still have my "first day bags" to fill, and some activity sheets to run off. And my "Parent Handbook" to finish assembling, too.


My school is air conditioned, which has made me glad to go in to work, even though it's unpaid, this past week or so. It's been hot as h*** here, over 100 each day, and not cooling off much at night, either. Which is partially why the tank top isn't sewn together ~ it's just too hot to hold all that luscious wool in my lap while I sew it together. It's supposed to be cooling down a little bit this week (I'm still waiting for that to happen ~ it's 6:30 pm and 91 degrees right now), and if it does, I'll sew that tank top together and be done with it.


Tomorrow, I'm having lunch with Shui Kuen and Catbookmom, my Elannite friends. SK is down from her home in Canada to see her mom, and she and Barbara and I are having lunch somewhere in Alhambra. I think SK's mom is joining us ~ she's a knitter, too, but she doesn't speak any English at all. SK is a very talented designer ~ her shawl patterns are beautiful and very, very well written. I recommend them all. Two of them are in magazines right now, in Elann ads. The first one out was the Champagne Leaf and Acorn Lace Shawl, on page 115 of the VogueKnits Anniversary issue out now. The other one is called Forget-Me-Not, and it's on page 103 of the new Fall issue of Knitter's. She is just amazing. I'm looking forward to seeing what she's got on her needles now, and Barbara is always fun to get together with, so lunch will be a blast. I'll try to remember to take my camera, and actually have pictures for this blog! (I just need to put the camera in my school tote tonight, since I'll be going in to school before I go to meet them)

Well, it's hot and I need to see about something for dinner that doesn't include turning on the stove or oven. Even the microwave puts out hot air, so I'm really limited in what I can make. But turning on anything that adds heat to this already overheated apartment will kill any appetite I might have, so I'm going to go get creative in the kitchen.

Absolutely No Knitting Content

Some things just make me so angry. There's a newstory on AOL today, about a Texas church that canceled a memorial service for a dead veteran 24 hours before it was scheduled because (they claim) they just found out he was gay.

"Officials at the nondenominational High Point Church knew that Cecil Howard Sinclair was gay when they offered to host his service," said his sister, Kathleen Wright. But after his obituary listed his life partner as one of his survivors, she said, it was called off. "It's a slap in the face. It's like, 'Oh, we're sorry he died, but he's gay so we can't help you,"' she said Friday.

Wright said High Point offered to hold the service for Sinclair because their brother is a janitor there. Sinclair, who served in the first Gulf War, died Monday at age 46 from an infection after surgery to prepare him for a heart transplant.

The church's pastor, the Rev. Gary Simons, said no one knew Sinclair, who was not a church member, was gay until the day before the Thursday service, when staff members putting together his video tribute saw pictures of men "engaging in clear affection, kissing and embracing." (His sister said there were no pictures like that in what she gave the church.)

"Simons said the church believes homosexuality is a sin, and it would have appeared to endorse that lifestyle if the service had been held there."

There is just so much wrong with this that I don't know where to begin. This is a Christian church? Heh. If so, haven't they heard that only Christ forgives, only God judges? And how does burying a dead veteran endorse homosexuality? The hypocrisy of most "Christian" churches makes me sick.

I respect everyone's right to believe in the religion of their choice. I do not respect religions who pervert the Bible to make it say it's okay to hate people based on their lifestyle, sexuality, skin color or choice of religion. I think there should be mandatory truth in advertising for churches ~ and any church who usurps God's sole right to judge, who denies Christ's right to forgive, should be forbidden from calling itself Christian. Perhaps they could call themselves The Church of Bigotry and Hate. That would at least be truthful.

Electricity ~ To Have or Have Not

My electricity has died twice this week. It's driving me nuts! Tuesday, it was out for over two hours. No lights, no fan, no computer, TV, radio, CD, DVD. Nothing. And of course it was around 90 degrees outside(it was 5 pm), which made it miserable inside my 2nd floor apartment. I finally left and sought refugee status with my brother and his family.

Today it went out, again. Fortunately, it didn't last long ~ 15 -20 minutes. But I lost the document I was working on, for my upcoming Masters. Had to recreate it, saving it every 5 minutes, of course. I am so not starting over a third time!

I just don't understand why the power keeps going out. I mean, this is SoCal. I lived through the Enron years, the brownouts, the power shortages during 110+ heat, and never, never lost power. Now, in the midst of what seems to me to be a very mild summer, I lose it twice in 2 days? (Actually, it was less than 48 hours between the first and second time) And the week's not over, yet.

Whatever bug the power company has, I desperately hope they get it fixed before school starts up again. I need my alarm to get up at the ungodly hour of 5 am (I am so not a morning person, and it's still dark out then). I need light to put my make-up on, to choose my clothing. I need electricity to make my coffee. I need electricity for my blow-dryer. I mean, I teach 10 year olds, and they don't deserve to see their teacher coffee-less with wild hair, you know? When the power goes out here, the only thing that works is my cell phone. Life isn't pretty without power.

Classic Knits, Stash, and Life

I succumbed to Erika Knight's Classic Knits yesterday (only 3 days after it arrived from Amazon!), and ordered some Big Wool Fusion from Webs to make the tank top in it. The pattern has a mistake in it ~ says it has a gauge of 18 sts to 4 inches, on 17s! ~ but if you just drop the 1 from the 18 it works just fine. Silly mistake, and I seriously don't understand how books get published with errors in it, considering how many people read the damn things before publication.

Anyway, in a few days (or more than a few days, considering it's Web's sale days) my yarn will be here and I'll be knitting away on a very fast tank top, one I can use right away. Until then, I will be working on Mariel, since it seems to have cooled down here. Unbelievable, I know. But even the weathermen are talking about the spring-like weather we're having. I can't remember an August that was this cool (well, 88 is cool for here, anyway). If this were the regular summer weather here in SoCal, I might actually like living here, instead of dreaming of moving away to someplace that has real seasons, and doesn't have furnace-like summers. But I just know that in a few days or a week, we'll be back to the regular August weather of 100+ temps, just when everyone has relaxed and begun to believe in this balmy weather. Life is like that.

I know I shouldn't have bought more yarn. Somewhere in my stash I'm sure I have something bulky like Big Wool that would have worked. I am just addicted to the purchase of yarn. Yarn and books. I can't seem to live without either. I mean, I'm single, and I live in a 3 bedroom apartment, because I need the room for my books and my yarn. And that's not even enough room, if I'm going to be honest. My books take up one whole bedroom, plus, in boxes, part of the closet in another, and about half the room in my bedroom (the one I actually sleep in). I have a *lot* of books! And yarn? It's everywhere. One bedroom is full of it, and it's overflowing in my bedroom, and in the living room, and.... Well, there's a lot of it, okay?

I really, really need to knit from my stash. Really. I need to make some sort of promise to only knit from my stash, and stick to it. And to knit, for that matter. I get startitis, regularly, but I don't want to tell you how many unfinished projects I have sitting around here. And the really amazing part is that many of them are finished except for the seaming up and weaving in of ends. Some are even seamed, but haven't had the ends woven in. I seem to get to the end of the knitting, and just lose interest. That has to stop, too. (So many things I have to stop!)

Ah, well, it will all be good for me. I'll spend less money (yay, says my budget), I'll have new(ish) clothes to wear, and I'll still be knitting, which is good for my blood pressure and my soul. Now, of course, I just need to find the time for it.

School will be starting in 22 days, although I'll be back in my classroom in just 5 days, to get it all set up for the new year. And I'm starting my Masters program this year, as well. I've applied to start in October, online. It will be the first class I've ever taken online, but it really does fit my life better than committing myself to physical attendance in a program. Most days I'm physically tired after spending the day with 35 ten year olds, plus dealing with an incompetent principal, and meeting with parents or my teaching partner. So, online just sounds better.

I guess I really like being busy, though. Between teaching, and learning, I also fundraise like mad for my students so they can go on the DC trip my partner and I do each year. It's pretty expensive for the kids ~ last year it cost $1500 per kid, $1700 per parent ~ but it's such a terrific trip for our kids. We go to DC, but also to Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown. 5th grade history is all about the founding of America and colonial life, so this trip is perfect. And the kids get so much out of it. So, their teachers commit to hours and hours and hours of fundraising. As well as the accounting of said fundraisers, crediting each kid with the amount he or she has earned, or that the parent group has figured out the division of a lump sum to credit them with. (That's a terrible sentence, but I'm too tired to care.)

I think I need a time budget in addition to my $$ budget (which I'm not very good at keeping, but I'm working on it!) I wonder if there's a program out there, like Quicken, that helps you budget time?

Nothing much to report

Well, it doesn't look like I'm going to finish Mariel this month. The humidity, combined with the heat, has made the idea of knitting a cashmere/mohair sweater just too much to think about. I haven't done more than 3 inches this entire week. I will finish it, but I think it's going to have to wait til it cools down a bit and dries out a bit more.

I don't understand the weather here lately. It's our driest year in recorded history, yet we've been dealing with 80%+ humidity for weeks. It's not supposed to be that bloody humid in SoCal. My mother's family is in the Carolinas, and I expect humidity there (and it's a killer humidity there ~ can humidity go above 100%?). But this is SoCal, a desert area. This freaking humidity is obviously lost on the wrong coast.

I've got the blahs, today. Nothing seems to interest me. Not reading, not knitting, and most definitely not cleaning. I just don't seem to have any energy at all. I'm blaming the heat. It doesn't even really dry out or cool off at night, and sleeping in that is difficult, at best. So, I'm tired, lack energy, and can't sleep. Not a good combination. I can't wait for fall!

A Rant (fair warning)

I am totally sick to death of the "cult of personality" that passes for news in this country. Weeks of Paris Hilton. Months of Brittney Spears. Ongoing 'breaking news updates' on Lindsey Lohan. Wake up, people! They are not news!

Why does valuable news time continue to be wasted on the irresponsible, spoiled, self-destructive behavior of these 'celebrities'? I don't care how self-destructive they are. Personally, if they all disappeared tomorrow, I'd be a happy woman. Having talent (although that's highly debatable for all three, less so for Lohan than the other two) does not make you newsworthy. It doesn't make you a good person. It doesn't make any difference in any aspect of the world.

And please, don't blame the papparazi. These women deliberately court the pack of photographers who feed on them. It is entirely possible to avoid them. Of course, that would mean not going on drunken rampages in public. It would mean not stripping down to your undies in public. It would mean wearing underwear under your too short mini skirts. It would mean being responsible and mature.

And it would mean that the news companies would have to actually report on real news. It's becoming very difficult to distinguish between the nightly news and Entertainment Weekly. When I tune in the news, that's what I want to see. I don't watch any of the entertainment programs, because I have no interest in their subject matter. I don't want it foisted on me during what should be a serious review of the day's noteworthy events. What's happening in the world? What's the news on Iraq, Afghanistan, London, DC? What's going on in India (besides the growing number of Indians who now constitute "customer service" for most major US companies). What's going on on the campaign trail? What's happening in Congress? Where are we on getting out of this disastrous war, and getting rid of this imperial presidency?

It was a disastrous failure by the media that led this country into accepting the Iraqi invasion. The Fourth Estate abdicated their responsibility to report the truth. And now, having realised that, what do they do? They abdicate their responsibility to report the news, and become an entertainment program or rag. It's just sickening.

Okay, we now return to regular programming.