Thanks for your comment, Marie, and for your gentle language on so emotive a topic. Joe has an interesting post (Sept. 8) about the man on the off-site parking jitney (what on earth do those words mean?) who is going to vote for McCain because he likes him better. Maybe that’s what it comes down to for all of us. How can a knitter not love Obama, remembering this?
But I am writing on the day when Lehman Brothers went down. These are times such as none of us has ever experienced. Our savings are at stake, our jobs, our children’s jobs, our grandchildren’s future. We can grit our teeth and handle taxes – the link stash haus provided sounds to me like a sober and balanced article about the difference between the candidates’ tax plans. Chaos is another matter.
Neither candidate claims to understand much about economics. (Does anyone, I sometimes wonder?) I trust Obama to have a better sense of what is happening on the city streets and in the suburbs, than a man who lives on a ranch and loses count of how many other houses he has. I trust Obama to take good advice. McCain has a vile temper -- I don't like that. I’m scared.
Knitting
Shan, I haven’t heard from Astor about that barrister’s wig pattern. I tried Ravelry, but it provided only a link to her website, where I’d already been. I haven’t got much time. I don’t suppose anybody actually has it? I would promise on scout’s honour to pay Astor twice what she’s asking for it, when I finally hear from her, if I could have it today or tomorrow.
Meanwhile I moved peacefully forward with the Princess. I spent some time yesterday thinking about how far there is to go, which is not the way to enjoy Princess-knitting. It should be pure process.
The trouble is, when one finally arrives at the centre, it is with a considerable sense of home-stretch-achieved. The page of chart looks easy and fun, a bagatelle compared to the three folding pages of chart one has just finished for the border. One soon realizes that the page is only a minute slice of centre, just to get you started, and that the home stretch goes all the way around the course, more than once.
My hope is to get to some imperfectly-imagined point from which it is possible to conceive of finishing the centre, before laying it aside again to knit Ketki’s Calcutta Cup sweater. At the very least, the band with the Cup and the date, which comes just above the ribbing, must be done this year. When that sweater is done, I hope to return to the Princess and press forward until she really is finished – except that at some point along there, the programme for the 2009 Strathardle Highland Gathering will be published: my chance to redeem the failure of the dinosaurs.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Since you'd have to alter the basic cap shape to fit the bear anyway, it might be worth experimenting.
ReplyDeletePeering at the picture: Astor's Barrister's Wig seems to me to be made by knitting each segment outward for six or eight rows, folding it over after a purl row and knitting it together with the original base stitches so that it doesn't sag and open. Then the next segment area is knitted across; a stitch or two seems to be left plain on the base row between segments, to make the separations.
Astor's with those perfect tight little rolls is ever so much better than the 19th Century hat, which makes separate loops in groups by making a bunch of double yarnovers and then dropping the extra to make the hanging loop.
On Obama's knowledge of economics: One of the many reasons I like him is what I've heard about his work experience right after graduating from Columbia. He worked briefly for a company in NYC as an analyst of international economics and finance. His coworkers say he learned quickly and was quite good at it. As someone who worked in international financial firms, this is impressive. As is the fact that he gave up this work to become a community organizer in Chicago.
ReplyDeleteMary
Sister, that is.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Mary Anonymous. Obama knows a lot about economics and, like many of the wise heads, saw this coming. He issued a statement on the crisis at 6 AM which is all over the wire services already; McCain has yet to comment. The links are too long to post; you can see for yourself by googling "Obama statement financial crisis". This crisis is a Republican creation; McCain's principal adviser on economics is Phil Gramm, a major supporter of the "no regulation" philosophy that got us here.
A remote parking jitney is the bus that picks you up in the remote (and therefore cheap) parking lot at an airport to take you to the terminal.
i am more amazed that any knitter can like palin. she is scary.
ReplyDeleteJean, I sent you an email about Astor's Barrister Wig method: =tamar is pretty much correct.
ReplyDeleteI am so terrified of genteel Southerners (and other areas, but this is where I live with it) of a certain age, otherwise die-hard liberals and Democrats, who just cannot bring themselves to pull the lever for a black man. I hear it at the grocery, at synagogue, from my in-laws, and it just frustrates me to no end. Jim Crow is not dead; he is alive and well and telling otherwise good-hearted old white folks to stay home rather than vote for Obama.
ReplyDeleteI am so tired of the statement, "I don't have anything against the man personally, but I don't believe I can vote for him." That is just code and if you have lived here long enough, you know what it's code for.
It just stinks to live in the only tiny blue pocket in a red state and know your vote doesn't count.