D and I went out for lunch and then came back to my place for her first knitting lesson.

I taught her to knit and purl, then bind off and cast on again. She made a nice little swatch and then took off, with one skein of Red Heart and some size 8 straights (the ones I learned on) and a photocopy of that how-to page from FCEK.

We spent some time looking at some of the knitting rags that I have accumulated these past few months, and saw some stuff she would like to knit.

We’ll see.

The first is: The Sweater Workshop: Knit Creative, Seam-Free Sweaters on Your Own With Any Yarn by Jacqueline Fee which I thought was pretty cool when I borrowed it from the library. This is a new edition and I am going to make the thing.

The second is: 365 Knitting Stitches a Year Perpetual Calendar by Ed Martingale. I got this one because I don’t have any stitch dictionary yet, so why not start with a small one?
I will post reviews of them when I read them, especially the sweater workshop since I am planning to make the thing.

Over on the socknitters yahoo group, folks were in quite a tizzy over a discussion about reproducing some socks that are patterned in a book which include Arabic writing that spells out Allah. Naturally, Muslims would find this offensive, like Jews, there are rules governing the writing of the name of God. Placing it on the bottom of ones foot to be trodden upon all day would fall into the list of things ya just don’t do. This makes complete sense to me, and when the subject came up, I thought to myself that a recreation could be made without offense by replacing Allah with some vertical stripes or even another word. Someone mentioned the word salaam which would still look nice, without offending. I really like this idea.

The thing that upset me about this thread was that it degenerated into an argument over Jews not spelling out God’s name. Considering that the name of his son is plastered on the back of car bumpers and windows, hanging from keychains and on everything from T-shirts to coffee mugs and questions such as WWJD (that’s Do or Drive, now) it doesn’t surprise me at all that people don’t know about this custom. But jeez, I’m not Jewish and I knew about it How sad that there are people who never interact with anyone different from themselves all their life! Or even worse, that they could know about someone else’s customs, but decide that their own are better and that they should disregard everything that they were taught because someone on the internet knows what God feels.

Not that our ::cough:: Leader ::cough:: is setting any better an example.
And the worst part? I am on digest, so it was all over before I even got a chance to rant on the list. The listmom had a mailbox full of complaints so the list went moderated. Going an telling mommy? I mean, aren’t we all (mostly) adults?

That was my morning. Up all night with the Santa Ana winds (which I think are really called Santana but somehow it got anglicized) blowing over the Santa Ana mountains of which I am a neighbor. So I wake up all in between, and I guess that counts as waking up in the wrong side of the bed.
I jump in the shower only to find there is no hot water! Agggh! At least it was warm outside, but for the moment, I was like a popsicle in my apartment. Grr.

My HTML is a bit rusty, so please forgive anything that’s broken. Hopefully I will fix it soon.

It’s one of those creature double feature type movies, Japanese maybe, and all I remember is the end where a girl cries and when her tears hit the water, the big stone monster starts to fade away from the bottom up.

I can’t believe Joe Strummer is dead. The Ramones were never a big deal for me, but The Clash . Music has been awful lately, and I find myself re-buying all the old vinyl I have buried in my closet. Last Christmas it was the UK version of The Clash, I bought one for my brother-in-law and had to pick up a copy for myself as well. Crazy coincidences – I was listening to Sandinista! when I picked up the latest (at the time) BNL CD. I popped it in and right there, on In The Car, is Steve talking about making out in the basement while taping the first three sides of Sandinista!.

I first heard The Clash because I was working in a supermarket during high school and someone played Lost in the Supermarket for me. I was hooked, starting with London Calling and working my way backwards and then forwards when Combat Rock came out.

I put on Sandinista! this morning while finishing up my Christmas presents for this year and let it play, not skipping over the silly songs like it is so easy to do with a CD, but letting it play just like I did back when I had it on vinyl and you couldn’t skip. It’s amazing how lyrics stay in your head, waiting to be retrieved after 20 years of being parked out on the back lot.

Test entry