Light and Momentary

Streaks

We ask our retreatants to unplug for the weekend, to surrender their phones and watches on the first night. This request has been a part of this family of retreat programs (Cursillo offshoots) for all the years I’ve been participating in them. But it’s become a bigger ask over the years. I’m curious about whether it’s even feasible for the programs that focus on high school and college students. One of the things that makes it harder is internet streaks. 

I have rolled my eyes about Snapchat streaks, but here I am squeezing out a few minutes in a jam-packed day to maintain my November blogging streak. I ended my crossword streak for the weekend, but I am preserving my Duolingo streak and my Kindle streak. 

It is good news for the Duolingo advertisers that I am extending my Duolingo streak, and the Amazon e-book division has certainly benefited from my Kindle streak. But I am not sure that these streaks serve my interests as much as they support the interests of marketing divisions. Might be something to re-evaluate. (But only after NaBloPoMo is over.)

A little gift

Last night one of my teammates and I had to do something extra that required us to figure out an AV system in a dark and cavernous unfamiliar church. Do you have much experience with church AV systems? They are not my fave. Even with exhaustive written instructions and considerable face-scrunching, there is always a lot of fruitless microphone-tapping and level-tweaking and increasingly disgruntled sighing.

I looked at the AV box and my heart sank. It was even bigger and more complicated than the one in my home church, the one that always offers me little lessons in humility. We had no instructions and we had to figure it out quickly. The church was too big and echoey, with too much HVAC noise, for us to go unmiked.

Blindly I reached into the box (no flashlight in my pocket, alas) and said, “I think I’ll try the upper right-hand corner.” Lo and behold, there was an unlabeled power button right under my fingers. The default setting, miraculously, gave us the three microphones we needed, at appropriate levels, with no noise in the system from extraneous inputs. 

In less than 24 hours I have had 3 subsequent go-rounds with other AV systems, all requiring considerable patience and face-scrunching. The contrast with that moment in the church reminds me of Inigo Montoya in the forest of Florin, being steered mysteriously to the Man in Black. 

Waiting

I said yes to a retreat that was supposed to happen in December 2020, but that was not a great time for bringing groups together indoors. It was postponed until this weekend; we have been preparing for months.

One of the things I was most concerned about is finished now, and it went well. We are waiting— tying up last-minute loose ends, getting ready for the team Mass. Our participants will arrive in a few hours. 

Patterns of Approach

In one of my classes we are talking about autism this week and I was working through the DSM criteria. I talked a bit about “patterns of approach,” the way that a person initiates contact with others. I asked them a question I’ve asked many times before: how do you establish a connection with someone you don’t know yet? I gave them some examples, all circling around the same core idea: someone is engaged in an activity that’s interesting to you and you want to express your interest. What do you do?

Crickets. They told me that they do not strike up conversations with people they do not know, ever. 

Some of this is probably COVID, right? And some of it is probably the way that people on college campuses often have earbuds in blocking outside noise. But I wonder how much of it will turn out to be a generational difference. 

I would be sad to live out my life in a world where lots of young people found it weird to talk to strangers. 

Your questions answered, part 1

I am keeping notes on the things you've asked me to blog about this month, and starting with an easy question: Giddy asked me to explain blocking.

When a knitter finishes a project, she will usually block it.This just means giving it a good soak in cool or lukewarm water, and then letting it dry. The details vary with the type of project.

If you are knitting with two colors, they will often look a little lumpy or puckery or uneven during the knitting. I took an in-progress picture of this cowl in February 2020*, and even though I'm very comfortable with stranded knitting you'll notice that it doesn't look its best in this first picture.

Once I bound it off (which required me to figure out that the pattern booklet was upside down in that picture, SIGH), I gave it a bath. A useful tip: when your FO (finished object) sinks to the bottom of the water, you can be confident that the fibers are saturated. Wool naturally repels water, so don't rush it. Once it's well and truly soaked, squeeze it gently and then bundle it up in a towel that can absorb most of the remaining water.

If you're blocking colorwork, find a quiet place for it to dry flat. Just smooth it out gently and leave it alone for a while. Above is an "after" picture for that cowl. To my eye it looks much smoother and neater.

Blocking is especially important for lace, which always looks like a crumply pile of nothing when you are knitting it. When you block lace, you pin it out while it's wet and leave it to dry. This will usually give you a substantially larger FO. Here's an in-progress photo from my last lace project. 

Down below is the blocking photo. It grew at least 25% longer and has retained the length. You might be able to see my blocking wires in the picture -- those allow me to shape an edge or a curve with fewer pins. I did not intend to knit an 8-foot scarf, but -- whoops! -- that's what I did.

Blocking will open out the lace and allow any decorative edgings to look their best.

Does anyone remember the totally bonkers turtle sweater that was two years in the making? It got a very aggressive blocking. If I'm going to knit bell sleeves with scalloped edges, then by golly I want bell sleeves with scalloped edges. The sleeves initially looked like little tiny sleevelets, suitable for Smurfs or house elves but not for a grownup human.

Here you can see the aggressive blocking in progress:

The finished project looks like this. Note that I do not have little tiny Smurf arms, and yet the sleeves fit me just fine. This is the magic of blocking alpaca. If you don't know about this feature of alpaca yarn up front, it may feel less magical and more diabolical.

Giddy asked if crocheted projects required blocking and I'm not sure. Crochet is much less elastic than knitting, and so I would expect blocking to have a much smaller effect. I have only a rudimentary knowledge of crochet, though, so I could be wrong about that. Yarn choices also have an effect on blocking. Animal fibers pretty much always benefit from blocking, but I have heard that it doesn't do much for acrylic yarn.

*Do you find yourself looking back on Jan/Feb 2020 as if you were watching a horror movie, shouting at the screen, "Run away! He's hiding under the bed! Run away!" I don't know where I could have run to avoid COVID, exactly, but I look back at that particular picture and think, Hoo boy, self, you had NO idea what was heading your way.

In progress

Back in the summer I bought a knitting pattern called As You Wish, from a mystery knit-along that had happened in the winter/spring. I have been plugging along, using up odds and ends of fingering-weight yarn. It was a five-week MKAL and I am in the middle of the week 4 clue. Currently it looks like this: 

The pattern is nicely constructed. You alternate half-width blocks of lightly embellished garter stitch with fancier full-width blocks, so that you get a bit of a break between each of the sections where you have to think about the pattern and count your stitches. In the full-width blocks it's mostly slip-stitch patterning, with a little bit of cabling and bobbling. (I hate bobbles. Have I told you this before? My least favorite knitting maneuver. Just one more strip of them, though.)

I appreciate the variety: different colors, but interspersed in a way that makes it easy to knit in the ends; different patterns, with a pleasant balance of plain and fancy; different textures, with enough garter that the finished product shouldn't curl. Here's a close-up (with all those slipped stitches, it will definitely benefit from a good blocking):

I have a boatload of pretty fingering-weight scraps and this has been a fun way to use some of them up. I am even thinking about doing another one in brown yarns after I finish this one. I am finding the unrelenting Princess Bride references a little wearying, even as a hardcore Princess Bride enthusiast, so perhaps I'll need a little palate-cleansing sock-knitting in between. The pattern is 33 pages long, every one of them reeaaaching to make Princess Bride connections. That's a minor quibble with a solid pattern, though. 

No, thank you

Imagine me sitting peacefully in my dining room, checking off completed tasks on my long Saturday list. Imagine a gasp from the living room. I know Stella very well; I can tell one gasp from another. "Is it a bug?" I ask calmly.

She sputters. "It's a-- no, it's a SNAKE." 

"Oh," says Marie, from beside her on the couch, "look at that."

Imagine a snake in my living room. A SNAKE. In my LIVING ROOM. Imagine me climbing anxiously onto a dining room chair while Elwood investigates. This is the same position I assumed when we watched Jurassic Park together recently. I do not like reptiles in my living room -- that's a big no-thank-you from me.

The snake disappears under the CD shelf, which is bolted to the wall.

"That was a very small snake. I'm having some thoughts that maybe I shouldn't say out loud," says Pete. "Like a nest in our house?" I say. He nods. I die a little inside, and think comforting thoughts of accelerants and arson. Could I move to snake-free Ireland without a job lined up, do you figure?

Other people return to their normal Saturday activities, a choice I find utterly baffling. There is A SNAKE, AN ACTUAL SNAKE in our LIVING ROOM. I text my friends. "INSIDE?" says one. "A pet?" asks another. (A pet. As if! It's like she doesn't even know me.) "Girl, get the holy water," says a third.

The internet says a broom will help to push him outside, but he is stubbornly invisible under the CD rack. Is he hiding between the baseboard and the wall? Am I going to have to burn down this whole damned house and not just the living room? We leave the broom propped against the wall, and after a bit he slips out of his hidey-hole to curl up behind it. Unfortunately, I make such loud wordless noises when I see him that he retreats again.

(Maybe, in hindsight, a solution would have been to play a recording of those "Jamie sees a snake in her living room" noises on a loop. They certainly appeared to be an effective snake repellent in the moment.) 

Soon he slithers over to the furnace duct (THE HORROR THE HORROR, NO REPTILES IN THE DUCTWORK PLEASE), where Elwood prods him with the broom until he coils himself around the stereo rack. Elwood grabs him with salad tongs and drops him on the porch, ENTIRELY too close to the front door. "Please," I say, "please grab him with the tongs again and throw him into the crabby neighbor's yard." (This is maybe not my finest moment.) Elwood throws him off the porch and into the herb garden. I would have preferred it if Elwood had thrown him into Saskatchewan, but okay. There's no holy water in the house but you can be sure that I go immediately to fetch my stash of blessed salt and sprinkle it everywhere.

But do you know what Pete says next? DO YOU KNOW?? He says, "I'm not sure that was the same snake we saw before."

I can't even proofread this post because it makes me hyperventilate. Any typos represent Jamie preserving the remnants of her wobbly sanity. 

Palate weirdness

Long ago my husband and I had a weird experience. We were eating gado-gado, an Indonesian dish with a spicy peanut sauce, at a little vegetarian restaurant. We couldn't finish it. I found it inedibly spicy, and he found it inedibly peanutty. I was fine with the peanut level, and he didn't think it was even remotely hot. But we still couldn't finish it.

At the time, I thought, "Oh, Elwood has a better spice tolerance than I do." This is, however, objectively untrue. I love spicy food; I eat it regularly. When we order Indian food as a family, we all like it hot -- and we all generally agree about mild vs. medium vs. hot vs. no-thank-you-too-much. I would say that in recent years I like my food hotter than Elwood does.

But last night we had another weird spice incident. It was just going to be three of us at home for dinner: Marie was working and Pete was out with friends. We ordered Chinese takeout, including Szechuan beef. I found it surprisingly spicy -- spicy as in I needed a glass of water right at hand, and left some of it on my plate because I wasn't enjoying it. For Elwood it didn't even register as hot, and Pete had the same reaction to it this morning.

This is weird, right? A local Indian restaurant uses a spicy scale that ranges up to 6. For me this dish was a 6; for Pete and Elwood it was a 1. It's the very same thing that happened back in 1993 with the gado-gado, the day after we all ate chana masala together for dinner and agreed that it was medium-hot. I do not understand this. Do you?

The Marriage Portrait

When I finished Hamnet I pre-ordered Maggie O'Farrell's next book, The Marriage Portrait. When it came out, though, I had some trouble getting into it. I read the beginning; I frowned. I read the beginning again. I stopped reading. 

But then six weeks later I went back to it. And you guys, it was SO good. I loved it. I'm still thinking about it. I loved the world she describes, and its characters, and the way she wove together the strands of her plot. I was not expecting suspense and yet my heart was in my mouth toward the end. I loved the ending even though the sadness of it still tugs at me. I even loved the author's note -- I did not know what those Medici husbands got up to. Highly recommended.

Typepad appears to be less broken

Typepad has been a MESS for a couple of weeks now. They had trouble with theit transition to new servers, they got hit with a DDoS attack, and then they spent, like, a week saying, "We are working very hard!" while nobody's blog would load. Or maybe parts of it would load in a sad and cockeyed way, but also maybe they wouldn't. People for whom blogs are a revenue source are big mad -- they've been losing advertisers, freaking out. Typepad just kept posting the same useless stuff on Twitter. Working hard! Getting better!

Now I have no idea what is involved here, and I can imagine that a subscription blogging service does not have a lot of money to spend on customer service reps here in the year of Our Lord 2022, but that seems like a terrible way to do business. However! Tonight, for the first time in a while, my blog will load. I am happy to see its pale-yellow 2004-era face again. If you have things to say but have been deterred by the endlessly loading comment interface, I'd love to hear from you. NaBloPoMo topic suggestions are welcome.

Soul cakes: tasty, easy, seasonally appropriate

All Souls' Day is today and Stella requested soul cakes. If you're in the mood for some seasonal baking, soul cakes might be just the thing.

Preheat your oven to 400.

To two cups of flour, add 1/2 t. salt, 1/2 t. baking soda, 1.5 t. baking powder, 1 T. sugar, and approximately a heaping teaspoon of fall-flavored spices. I used Kafe Hawaij with extra cinnamon. Stir your dry ingredients together and sprinkle in a handful of raisins or currants. Cut a stick of butter into small cubes and rub them briskly into your flour mixture. Add about 2/3 c. buttermilk, or ordinary milk to which you've added a splash of vinegar. Stir gently and tip onto a floured surface. Knead gently until it coheres (don't overdo it or you'll have tough soul cakes). Pat it out to about a half-inch thickness and cut out circles with an upside-down glass. It's traditional to cut a cross into the tops of your cakes. Brush with egg wash, if you like, and bake for 20 minutes.

For reasons that are opaque to me, all the soul cake recipes that come up for me in Google are unleavened, yielding a "cake" that I find unpleasantly brick-like. Sure, they would have been unleavened six hundred years ago. Also six hundred years ago people were serving up roast peacock for festive occasions. I do not wish to eat a peacock; I do not wish to eat a pile of unleavened flour. Modern cooking, I embrace it. 

These are speedy enough to serve for breakfast; they also make a welcome afternoon snack.

November 1

Okay, my friends, it is the first day of November. Who's ready to party like it's 2005? I can't even remember the last time I saw another blogger do NaBloPoMo, but whatever. Thirty days, thirty posts, here we go.