My Middle Name is Patience

Mary Tudor, she is finis.......mostly

Well, almost. She needs her buttons sewn on and I got bored weaving in ends before plunging her into her bath (I wove most of the ends in while knitting - except the sleeves. They have a lovely fringed effect)  but other than that? Done!!

Much thanks to Marina, who sent me a picture of a sample she knit of the mitered corner along with a chart - it turns out I'd neglected to do the picking up of stitches on BOTH right and wrong side rows. Thanks also to Joan and Lorraine for their help.

There's still one more update to come - when the buttons are on, but the knitting? She is done. I had a bump on the road to progress when I put in nine buttonholes for eight buttons - I knew I shouldn't have picked her back up Saturday night while watching Suspicion, but oh well. It worked as a swatch for the buttonholes  - typically horrid - but serviceable. Too bad the mitered corner with the buttonhole is going to be the side that shows - it's wonky, but oh well. (Second picture of the corners is the buttonhole miter.)

TV: Law & Order: Criminal Intent and In Plain Sight on Sunday nights. The season finale of 24 tonight, which I'm going to miss because I'm going to see my niece unwillingly sing opera, much better than finding out how Jack saves the world this time, don't you think? The season finale of NCIS is tomorrow (Tuesday) night. Cross your fingers Ziva doesn't die or get deported and we're stuck with that flirty chick Jules. Even Abby fell for her! Feh.

Chuck was renewed! Yes! The Dollhouse got the nod too. I really hate how CSI:NY ended, killing off one of the characters is getting so cliched. Like Lost. No one is safe.......unless it's Jack or Kate, the two I'd really like to see die. I didn't actually watch Gray's Anatomy closely enough to realize they did the "which one will die?" bit either until Opal filled me in. (Okay, I admit I was expecting Izzie to die and I didn't feel like bawling my eyes out so I basically had it on as background noise).

Wow, the big networks have dreck on their schedule for summer. Give me cable. The only thing that looks good to me is Glee, and I refuse to figure out why.

Reading: After The Periodic Table I thought I'd go for something light so I picked up Cattery Row by Clea Simon, one in the series about Theda Krakow, music journalist and Musetta's mom. Theda is on the trail of catnappers and kitten mills and it had a fabulous ending. She waffled too much about her love life - the proverbial struggle between the Good Man and the Bad Boy but that's probably aggravating just to me.

Currently reading - and loving - 1632 by Eric Flint. It's the first in his Ring of Fire series, a small West Virginia coal town is flung back in time 400 years to 1632 and smack into the middle of the Thirty Year War in the Germanic principalities. I'm sorry to report that I know practically nothing about this piece of history even with my half German descent. I love that it's unabashedly pro United States and that we're the good guys. I also love that the originally rallying cry was for the United Mine Workers of America.

Hez sez: "Geez, you're finally done with my blanket? It's been exhausting watching you all these years. Wait. You're not casting on another member of the English royalty are you? I give up."

Have a good week!

Mitering Mary Tudor

I've joined a reading challenge! Eco-Challenge at Chris' Book-a-rama. I like that the rules say between 1-5 books and I can justify my choices with a spirited debate. Starts May 1 through Sept 30th.

I've gone from saying "Cool" to saying "Excellent." Not so much in a Ted & Bill Adventure way but more in a mad professor style. What I want to know is why? Am I going to start cooing  "darling" soon?

In knitting news, stupid mitered corner. Evidently you're supposed to pick up the edge stitches of the body and miter the corner of of the buttonhole band while you're attaching it.

Somehow, I don't think this is right.

She has a "marked stitch" at the end that I read as it's knit together with a picked up stitch from the body but then I still have only the one marked stitch and I'm supposed to be adding five stitches to the band. Shouldn't there be slipping in there? And picking up of more stitches?

It's the mitering one side and picking up the edge of the already knit part that's confounding me. I can miter a corner while I'm knitting the whole thing but half done? Argh. Any suggestions? (Not including setting it on fire. I'm too close to being done).

READING: I've been reading The Periodic Table by Primo Levi - I ran across it in a used bookstore Thursday night and it’s just fabulous so far. It’s the semi autobiographical novel of his life as an Italian Jewish chemist up to and during WWII (so far) and he’s done the fascinating twist of sectioning off pieces of his life using various periodic elements as the anchor to those memories.

                    Monday

Is anything sadder than a train
That leaves when it’s supposed to,
That has only one voice,
Only one route?
There’s nothing sadder.

Except perhaps a cart horse,
Shut between two shafts
And unable even to look sideways.
Its whole life is walking.

And a man? Isn’t a man sad?
If he lives in solitude a long time,
If he believes time has run its course,
A man is a sad thing too.

–Primo Levi
January 17, 1946
From Collected Poems
Faber and Faber, London, 1988.

Flu & Tax Season - What could be more delightful?

Well, tax season is delightful to me, I enjoy doing them but the flu? Not so much, especially since this is my second round with it in something like 3 weeks and this time not only do I have the ever popular running-like-a-faucet nose but the slight fever that's causing massive body aches and chills and it's not like I can stay home and sleep the day away (but I'm not that sick anyway. Just icky feeling sick.)

Also? Whining.

I'd post a picture of the cute dishcloth and skeins that I won from  The Barefoot Cobbler's Resolution Contest (A resolution that I totally ---shhhh, have not even attempted yet) (The resolution was To Get a Jump on my Christmas Knitting/Presents, which I am so going to do. Later.) but I'm not really sure where I put my camera. (It's somewhere. Probably at home on the bookshelf). And then she nominated me as a You Make My Day blog! Along with The Fairy Godknitter, the lovely mrspao at mumblings and Knitted and Purled which leads me to believe that you are all very sweet but misguided. Snark! Gossip! That's me. OTOH, snark & gossip makes my day.....

I am completely wimping out on passing it on - I sat on my cat this morning, for Pete's sake. I am not to be trusted. (In my defense, she'd burrowed under the covers and I had no idea she went back to bed.) Hezekiah is fine, by the way. Fit as a fiddle. (Is it possible that this cold has morphed me into a hale and hearty 70 year old retired admiral from the 1800's? Because that's the voice in my head. Shhh. I'm blaming Jane Austen).

Oh, but I'd be really remiss if I didn't review the two (yes two! Two whole books!) that I'd read in January. Becoming Charlemagne by Jeff Sypeck and Unspeakable: The Story of Junius Wilson by Susan Birch and Hannah Joyner.

Unspeakable: The Story of Junius Wilson broke my heart. It's the story of a deaf black man born in the early 1900's and his lifetime stint in a mental ward in the South. His family, the medical staff, the law, the government, all had a hand in keeping him locked up for their own various reasons. I loved that I understood the logic and emotion behind all involved in the decisions, it scared me silly to think that it was so easy to do. We've come a long way, but have we really? I highly recommend this book.

Ooookay. Well, I do love breakfast. And pancakes.

Titleless Thursday

Booking Through Thursday

1. Speaking of writing in books, what about writing the entire thing? Do you write? Aspire to write? Dream about writing? I used to. In fact, I assumed as a child that I would become a world famous novelist because I loved to read so much. It turns out that it in reality, it takes talent, ambition and a certain amount of luck. I will let you all decide which one I lack or if it's just one. 
2. If you do write, do you do it for yourself, or because you hope to be published? (Or because you ARE published?)  If I do write, other than here, it is soooo for myself!

In other book news, 3M is hosting a 15 book/15 decade challenge. Sounds like a great way to stretch my reading horizons.