f/c

Those who know me well, and I'm fairly open with my friends, know that I have a theory for just about every incidental thing that comes along.

There's the Pez theory of anxiety, the tunnel theory of procrastination, the Chinese Boy Syndrome (a theory of guilt assumption).

One of my theories is the Theory of Deciding Whether to Eat Something that May Be Fattening. It's shortened as "f/c," which is read as "flavor to calorie ratio."

A case in point: Sour Cream-Orange Cake.

You may or may not think this sounds good. I, for one, think that anything that has a starch base and contains the word "orange" is worth committing any number of selected felonies for. Getting fatter, though, is a dicier proposition.

The Sour Cream - Orange Cake I was looking at, one of Mollie Katzen's more sinister compositions, has as its dairy ingredients a cup and a half each of butter and sour cream. This is of course not including flour, eggs and sugar. And this is all in one standard-sized cake.

Oh, did I mention the syrup?

What I'm getting to (yes, I am!) (eventually!) is that this very, very delightful food has essentially the same flavor-to-calorie ratio as tap water and celery sticks. It's not that it doesn't make you fat, it's just that it's worth it.

So there are foods that have a high f/c, such as pretzels and sushi, and low f/c, such as (for me -- no hate mail please) shortbread. I make a lot of shortbread, but I don't really eat it. It just doesn't have enough flavor in it for me to outweigh all those calories.

Forgive me please for getting off the subject of knitting and on to the subject of dessert math. I am getting close to finishing this Fair Isle sweater and if I can figure out how to take a decent photograph and post it, I will. Varian Brandon created this pattern and she's one of the best, IMHO.

If a tree

I got the shock of my life the other day.

Oh heck, I exaggerate.

I went to a knitting retreat this past weekend and heard from a friend there that she had read something on my blog. This came as something of a surprise. I had always assumed that my previous writings were going into space like radio broadcasts from the 1930s, never perishing but never to be observed again.

Blogs are, in my experience, a lot like valedictory addresses. It is difficult to write them without making them, in the end, all about oneself. Or at least it seems to be so these days. There was a day, real or imagined, when our mothers taught us not to turn the conversation to ourselves, or at least not to go on and on about this ultimately (to most people other than the speaker) uninteresting subject.

That day, I fear, has largely receded. In this blog as in so many others.

Wherefore, thank you Ann, for letting me know that someone has reached out into the cosmic recesses and read something of mine. It may, just possibly, give me the impetus to draw up to my keyboard and write again.

Milton's Birthday

Today is John Milton's birthday. 400th, to be exact. Down at the lower right I keep a copy of his poem "On His Blindness," the source of the title of my blog "They Also Serve."

In honor of this 400th birthday though I'm reprinting it here.

The way I read it, Milton would like to serve God better but feels prevented by his blindness from doing so as vigorously as sighted people might. He realizes that God does not perhaps see this as preventing service.

To better understand it, think of the word "light" as meaning "sight."

On His Blindness

WHEN I consider how my light is spent
E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide,
Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, least he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd,
I fondly ask; But patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite.

They also snob

The only person who likes a snob is either the snob herself or a fellow snob. At my circle we're pretty much all snobs so we tend to get along pretty well in the main.

My subject today is a "craft store" whose name, other than to tell you it's Michaels, shall remain nameless.

I refer principally to an incident that happened about a year ago, when my daughter, whom I'd just taught to knit, came home for Thanksgiving during her sophomore year in college up in Yankeeland (where, I admit, they often have a deeper appreciation for knitting, or at least for wool) with a newly made, apparently errorless scarf. I even mentioned it in a previous story here.


What I didn't mention was that I asked her, as you would have, what the yarn was and where she got it. It was, I think, a blend of mostly acrylic. Fine. I have no beef with acrylic. I don't use it usually except for things that are going to get frequent use by someone under 18 months, but that's just a matter of my personal wool worship. I understand this to be a matter of taste.

But then she told me she got the yarn at Michaels. (Pardon the absence of the apostrophe but so it appears to be in the original. I cannot help but think that several Michaels own the store. It is patently untrue that the store's only inventory is people named Michael.)

When she said the word, I wrinkled my nose. I protest that I did so not out of pure personal snobbery, but out of something of a collective judgment. For the people I knit with, the action is part of the pronunciation of the name. It's like this: "Michaels" -- half pause -- nose wrinkle.

This could be because I knit with these people in a yarn store, whose livelihood depends in some respects on customers' judgment that their favorite yarn is in some way superior to Caron® One Pound®. Whatever the reason, we consider ourselves too good for the likes of a concern that sells mediocre greeting cards and plastic giraffes among other "TONS OF GIFTS UNDER $5." In fact, I don't think most knitters like to think in terms of tons of anything, unless it is perhaps tons of musk oxen with their annual output of .08 ounces of qiviut.

So yes, we are smugly satisfied that our yarn is better than that. I imagine we secretly believe that if we bought a mass of Red Heart Designer Sport at our home store it would acquire a patina of elegance compared to the same yarn at Michaels. But my store doesn't sell Red Heart, so I'll never know.

Right now I'm on a Shetland kick. In the last few months I've been trying to convince some folks in Scotland to send me a yarn sample card. They promised me they'd do it about three months ago, and again about three weeks ago, but, you know, they just haven't yet. They may just be over there wrinkling up their collective Scotts noses when they hear I'm an American.

It's disgusting how some people can be such snobs.

I'm Away From My Desk Right Now . . .

but yeah, your call is very important to me.

This is a busy time of year, in the sense of being away from home a bunch. Missing two meetings of the knitting group. That sort of thing. Once for Thanksgiving and once for the Clergy Spouses' Retreat.

Fortunately, I have this Einstein Coat thing to keep me company. This is what it isn't going to look like:

The image calls it a "jacket" and the picture looks like its given name -- a coat. The way it knits up is mostly jacket-like, because it's not as long as in the picture.

I ignored the specific directions and am knitting a coat for Ann. The problem is that I've ripped out the bottom half once and the top half at least twice. I've tried to improve on the directions and I keep forgetting things. I want it done by Christmas, so I can give it to Ann as a present.

Then I'll start my second Aran sweater. Or ALO (Aran-like object). I can't wait to do it and I will be doing it, with any luck, while at the knitting (and quilting)retreat, while taking, that is, a class on Aran Knitting, taught by Varian Brandon.

I recently realized that I didn't exactly start doing Aran knitting with the sweater. I kind of waded into it with hats and scarves and the like, getting a little more Aran-like with each one. Suffering, I suppose, from acute Aranoia.

Perhaps after all it isn't a coincidence that my firstborn is named Aaron.

What, again?

I haven't posted for very nearly a year. Oh well, enough of that.

I have been very busy knitting. Did a whole bunch of stuff, but mostly finished a sweater recently, of the Aran variety. I did a typo on that last sentence the first time through. What do you suppose an Arab sweater is?

So here it is. My first sweater.

It's really hard to see the detail so I took some closeups. So here they are. Front and back.

The overall pattern is mine, but the big knot is from Janet Szabo, who has become something of the center of my knitting world in the past few months. One day I suppose I'll grow up and do fair isle sweaters, but for the moment I'm doing cables and more cables.

It's been a year, as I've said, and I have done a lot of knitting, and mostly knitting it seems, in between job and family. I've been to SAFF and Rhinebeck, knitted scarves and hats and mittens and this sweater. A baby blanket or two. Three really, and almost finished with Ann's coat. And a knitting retreat with Varian and the others. I've done a lot but no blogging.

Well, as I said, I have a lot to blog about. But as one who was certainly wiser than I once said, "All in good time."

May the blogging deities assist me.

As Fast as You Can

Every year the Grove Park Inn in Asheville has a gingerbread house contest. We try to get there if we can. We went tonight. We didn't see as many houses as we usually see, but there were some pretty spectacular ones.











The best I can tell these are basically 100% edible ingredients, though many of them are only a little gingerbread.










The dentist changed his mind. He's taking out my infected wisdom tooth tomorrow. I think this is what Jim Henson died of. Or maybe not. Anyway, if you don't hear from me again, and you find this little out-of the way blog, remember me kindly.