My weekend entertainment

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Anyone watch the lunar eclipse last night? Here's the obstructed view of the beginning of it, from my yard:

Clearly, I need:

• a longer lens
• a tripod
• a tree-free viewing location.

Oh well.

I've developed some kind of dry, hacking cough, (which turns to a lovely whistling-wheeze when I'm lying in bed), so I've stayed in all weekend and have been playing with my knitting, to keep myself entertained. And I've been having a marvelous time.

If you recall, last weekend I purchased some sweet, one-of-a-kind Ellyn Cooper's yarn:

Ellyn Cooper's Yarn Sonnets - "Fantasia", in 'African Dance' colorway

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After knitting and ripping out far too many "practice" swatches, I finally settled upon a needle size [U.S. 17 (12mm)], and number of stitches to cast on (20), in order to make my scant 144 yards go as far as possible.

Here's an extreme close-up of how it looks knitted up:


I am knitting what I'm calling a "cheater's moebius", in that it's just a garter-stitch rectangle which I'll later twist and graft the ends together for a seamless join. How will I accomplish this, you ask?

Well, first of all, I used a provisional, crochet cast-on, so that my first row of stitches can be held live for the future grafting process:

red "waste yarn" at bottom used for the provisional crochet cast-on
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And then I did some googling research to find out just how exactly one performs a garter stitch graft, since the more common kitchener's graft is designed for stockinette stitch. The short answer is that, instead of the typical knit-purl, purl-knit rhythm of the kitchener's stitch, for a garter stitch graft the rhythm is knit-purl, knit-purl. Probably the best instructions I've found, (that I'll be following closely when the time comes), can be found here. (<- And, if you happen to click that link, how cute is that hat she's wearing?! I'm definitely going to buy that pattern sometime soon. Because I need another hat to knit -- there've been so few in my life lately...). ;-)

As fun as this little project has been, it's not the only knitting entertainment I've had this weekend.

But first, a little introductory tale, if you'll bear with me.

If you're a regular reader of WendyKnits, then you're aware of her current yarn diet, and some of her readers are following her lead. If you read her list of guidelines, you'll notice that one of her exemptions to the yarn diet is that sock yarn doesn't count, which makes perfect sense for Wendy, since she easily knits a pair a week.

Now, I, too, like just about every other knitter I know, have more yarn than I know what to do with currently. But, I'm not on any kind of yarn diet, because I don't like rules and limitations messin' with my knitting mojo. I do already have a sort of built-in, internal check-and-balance system in my head for yarn purchases. If I cannot realistically foresee a project that I'll knit this year with the yarn, I usually won't buy it, UNLESS it is at a ridiculously low price, OR it's a one-of-a-kind, hard-to-find yarn (see Ellyn Cooper's, above), or, I've just fallen in love with it because of the color or fiber, or whatever. This system seems to work for me, for the most part, but where I've fallen down is with sock yarn.

Until I reorganized my stash back in January, I didn't realize how much sock yarn I'd actually accumulated. I currently have a big shopping bag overflowing with sock yarn, which is all well and good if you're as prolific as Wendy, but makes no sense if you're like me and aren't knitting socks, currently. I do plan on knitting socks again someday soon, perhaps once summer heat is in full swing. But for now, my one and only yarn diet rule is that I won't buy any more sock yarn until I start knitting socks again.

And I tell you all of that to lead up to what I'm about to show you, which is that I bought more sock yarn.

I'm nothing, if not fickle.

Here's what I bought:

BMFA "Socks That Rock" in 'Fairgrounds' and 'Chapman Springs',
(both in heavyweight)

Now, in my defense, I bought that yarn for an immediate project, so it is in use, even as I type this.

And what, pray tell, is it being used for, you ask?

It's the Chevron Scarf, from Last Minute Knitted Gifts, except that instead of Koigu, I'm using Socks That Rock.

And how did this come about, you're wondering? (My, aren't you a curious one...!)

Well, I blame the internets for this latest obsession inspiration. I was over reading former Richmonder Courtney's blog one day and gasped when I saw this scarf she's working on. And then she linked to someone else who's knitting one. And that person linked to someone else, and so on, and so on. And then I discovered a Flickr group knit-along for this scarf, and I knew I had to have me some of that. So I made my purchase, and it came this past week, and I immediately wound the yarn and began knitting with it.

I've not gotten very far, but, so far it's pretty:

Only five more feet to knit. This could take awhile....

Extreme close-up

It's a very simple, four-row repeat, easily memorizeable, which is good, because I've been needing a mindless knitting project to take with me to places (TNK, family gatherings, etc.) where there are too many distractions to be able to concentrate on anything slightly complicated.

I will try not to bore you, dear reader, with daily or even weekly progress reports on it, because it's going to take me a long time to finish. It's sock yarn, after all, even if I am using the heavyweight and size 6 needles. That's still a far cry from size 17 needles (see cheater's moebius, above).

One final, random thought, before I end this post:

Is there something wrong with me, if I love this tv commercial, not for the cute mini-pooch, but for the purse he's sitting in?

Where can I get me one of these?
(the purse, not the dog)

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I got nuthin'...

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...nuthin' of significance to blog about, that is, so I will leave you with a 1960's-1970's musical trivia quiz. (Update: Answers posted at bottom of this post.) I spent a good portion of Friday cleaning up my computerized music library, which is why this stuff is fresh in my mind.

And no, I don't use iTunes, since I don't own an iPod. My mp3 player is a Creative Nomad Jukebox 3, and I use MusicMatch Jukebox to organize my music library. No, I'm not bitter at all that I bought that expensive, cumbersome thing just minutes before iPods became the standard. Not. Bitter. At. All. I will cling to it until it dies and gets buried alongside discarded 8-track players and Betamax recorders. But I might have to help it meet an early demise, perhaps the next time I'm near an open window of a tall bulding....


Okay, on to the quiz.

No fair Googling for the answers.

1. Name the group who recorded "Funky Town". Extra credit if you can name the year in which it went to #1.
2. Name the group who recorded "(Here I Am) Stuck in the Middle with You".
3. What popular song did the group Mott the Hoople record?
4. Who recorded "Do You Love Me (now that I can dance)"?
5. Who recorded my all-time favorite song, "Build Me Up, Buttercup"?
6. An easy one: Who recorded another of my favorites, "Drift Away"?
7. Another easy one, another favorite: Who recorded "Shambala"?
8. Who originally recorded "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"?
9. Who recorded "Ariel"?
10. Mega-easy: What song with a girl's name in the title did Pure Prairie League release?

That's enough for now. Good luck!

Answers (click for full-size):

Elephants in my Living Room, Lions in my Lap

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I return from another unintended long absence, to write about a subject that's about as far removed from knitting as one can get.

I used to work with elephants.

As an admitted science nut lover, I watch a lot of PBS, which regularly airs some excellent science programs, including Scientific American Frontiers, Nova, Nova: Science Now and Nature. Last night they aired Best of Nature: 25 Years, which was a remarkable collection of clips from their best shows over the last quarter-century. Among those clips was the obligatory cheetah-chases/catches/eats-gazelle footage, which I always find hard to watch. But if you can sit through the predator-prey clips, you're then rewarded with more heart-warming footage, like that of a mother polar bear snuggling in her den nursing her tee-tiny newborn cub.

My favorite clip from last night's show was the incredibly moving story of Shirley the elephant, which originally aired in 2000 as an episode called The Urban Elephant. Shirley has lived a very hard life in one circus or zoo after another, and looks every inch of her 52 years. Prior to 2000, she had spent the last 20 years of her life as an isolated elephant at a zoo in the deep south, when it was decided to move her to The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, where she was reunited with another old circus elephant she'd last seen 22 years prior. Their reunion was nothing less than tear-jerking -- there was absolutely no mistaking the affection shared by Shirley and her old friend, Jenny, reinforcing the growing belief that elephants crave socialization and suffer in isolation.

And it wasn't a stretch to be reminded, as I watched Shirley's story, of a brief time in my youth when I spent a break between college semesters working at a nearby wild animal "safari", one of the hardest and most rewarding jobs I've ever had. I won't sugar-coat it for you -- much of my time was spent shoveling animal poo, (whether it be elephant, rhino or giraffe), or hefting hay bales around to feed them, or hosing out their barns. Hard, smelly, back-breaking work. But the rewards were priceless. I got to see elephants, giraffes, rhinos, lions and tigers up close and personal. I got to meet a baby elephant, and ride on the back of an adult, (I was a lot thinner, twenty-some years ago).

And I got to play with lion and tiger cubs:

Lion cubs
***Me (nice hair, nice shnozz) and cub.
(I also worked there during summers as an EMT, which explains the uniform)
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One thing has always bothered me, though, about that experience. The elephant handlers always carried with them a 3-foot long solid steel pole with a sharp hook at the end, and never hesitated to use it on the elephants if they felt the animal was behaving too aggressively towards their human handlers. I was told that a handler uses the hook-tool or ankus to let the elephant know who's in charge, and that if the elephant starts to prod you with its trunk, the next time, they'll nudge you with it. The time after that, they'll shove you, and the next time, they'll knock you down and step on you, which can't end well. I was never sure if that story was really true, or was just an excuse for cruelty.

I thought about that again last night, as I was watching the story of Shirley and Jenny. I didn't see any of the handlers at either zoo in that story using the hook-tool. Perhaps it really was just an instrument of cruelty, leftover from bad circuses.

After the PBS show ended, I got on the internet to learn more about what happened with Shirley and Jenny. PBS wrote a touching follow-up about them, here. I then found the website of the Tennessee sanctuary where they've been living. That's when I read about a handler there named Joanna Burke. Joanna was a devoted caretaker at the Elephant Sanctuary, and last July, while attempting to inspect the infected eye of another elephant there named Winkie, was knocked down and killed by Winkie, a tragedy that shocked and saddened everyone involved.

And so it appears that the stories of potential elephant aggression towards humans have not been exaggerated. But in Joanna Burke's case, it happened so fast that I'm not sure if a hook-tool would have made any difference. The sanctuary attributes Winkie's surprising aggression to post-traumatic stress disorder in elephants, and considering the lives they've led, that may very well be the case.

I'm still not sure how I feel about that hook-tool, but after watching that PBS special and reading those stories, I'm forced to reconsider my feelings about circuses, zoos and captive wild animals in general. Perhaps the Barnum & Bailey mindset of my youth (wild animals are for our enjoyment and entertainment) might be maturing to a Cirque du Soleil philosophy (we must be stewards rather than exploiters of God's wild creatures).

One thing's for darn sure: we live in an amazingly complicated, intimately interconnected, bafflingly wondrous world and universe, and the more science I'm exposed to, the more and more I appreciate God's creation.

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A follow-up.

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Another even shorter post to point you to the link for the laugh-until-you-cry Dane Cook "Growing Up Catholic" bit. I've seen this like five times, and I still howl.

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Update 12/6/05: You can now view his SNL monologue and the sweater sketch online.

Just a quick Sunday evening post...

...because there's just ten minutes until I'm lured to the boob tube to watch Sunday night must-see tv: West Wing, Desperate Housewives, & Grey's Anatomy.

Watched the Redskins finally win a game (Hail!) earlier today, after three losses in a row. Perhaps we'll get a wildcard slot after all. We can only hope Joe Gibbs' heart-to-heart meeting with the key players earlier this week will stick with them through the next few games.

Watched SNL last night and my favorite comedian, Dane Cook was hosting. What a nice surprise! That guy is pee-in-your-pants funny, and has a new CD out, which I may have to purchase if Santa doesn't bring it. I first saw him a few years ago on Comedy Central Presents, and my favorite bit of his involves what he calls "Christ Chex". So irreverent, but so funny! I think his monologue last night was a hoot, but the "turtleneck sweater" sketch was also hilarious. I've been trying to Google a picture of that, but there are none, thus far. It would have been a stretch, but would have allowed this post to qualify as knitting-related! ;-)