Best Quote I Heard All Day
All great truths begin as blasphemies.--George Bernard Shaw

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

The music had to go. Sorry. It was getting on my nerves and, I'm sure, yours.

Two-Minute Blog
I have exactly one half-hour to write this, so it will be short and low on substance. There's cleaning to be done before the realty hordes descend upon the townhouse, beginning at 10 a.m. One of them wanted to come at 9. She was disavowed of that idea quickly.

I will be at the lake today and tomorrow with Ma, knitting and swimming.

Slainte Part IV
I've actually made substantial progress on this--now into the body and I will post a picture as soon as there's enough on the needles.

I've found a swell way to fiddle with the layout of the Aran motifs and I don't know why it never occurred to me before: Make photocopies of each individual stitch pattern you are interested in using and slap them on a piece of paper. You can either photocopy the picture from a book, if that's what you're using, or take a picture of your pattern swatches and use those. Before you paste them in permanently (I used a glue stick), you can rearrange them, add or substract patterns, and leave enough room between the pictures to notate those extra reverse st sts or other small stitch patterns that you need for fill.

Not unlike playing with paperdolls, which I did once as a child and immediately dismissed as a stupid way to spend time.

It's important not to jam bigger cabled motifs together without those separators. Otherwise, the total design balance becomes a wreck. The eye needs to be able to discern the patterns easily and giving those larger motifs room to breathe is a good idea.

This playing-with-paper was well worth my while, even though I'm pretty good at visualization.

I also wrote in the number of stitches for each segment, plus the extra separators, and I had a fine road map. If you like, I'll try to scan in my map when I have a minute.

Old, Older, Oldest
I've decided that the word "elderly" is going to be eliminated from my vocabulary, despite the fact that I now qualify for some "senior" discounts. Egad.

When I consider the women I know who are 60+, "elderly" is not only a poor adjective, it's insulting. And I don't much like "seniors" either.

These age qualifiers are awful. When I think of my mother, my next-door-neighbor Helen, and a few others, who skated into their later years with aplomb and verve, I realized that not giving a rat's ass about their age is the secret to their success.

Consider this: Of my closest knitting friends (Kathy, Selma, Joe, Carol, Lisa, Liza, and Loopy), I am the second oldest. (Sorry, Chris, you win the big prize.) Lisa is the same age as my oldest daughter and yet I never feel like there is any generation gap whatsoever. Of my non-knitting friends, my dear friend AnnMarie is almost 10 years younger than I am. Only Bob, Willy, Dotti and Peggy are my contemporaries. I still marvel that I'm now 55. Must be a huge miscalculation.

It's all in your head, for sure. I recall Grandma referring to women younger than she as "old bags." That's the philosophy to espouse.

And now I take my rare and handy self up to the deck for further knitting and coffee intake. Have a good weekend.