1--L---P+----1----@10--2----+----3----- R 15 July 1997 A sad follow-up to my comment that the farmers on Clipp Road were getting their hay in. One of them was killed by his hay baler. One paper said that he was run over as his tractor rolled downhill; the other said that the tractor tipped over, causing the baler to fall on the farmer. This was the fellow who lived in the other half of Nancy's chicken coop, so she wasn't at the envelope-stuffing party yesterday evening. Helping the relatives, I think. Nobody else knew where she put the little tubes with the sponges, so we used wet paper towels to seal the envelopes. I thought for a moment the story was being repeated on this morning's radio news, but it was somebody else. The radio report was vague and confused, but the second victim appears to have tried to adjust the machine without turning it off first. In neither case were there any witnesses. Just checked on Fred. While reading the paper, I heard him meowing "let me out, let me out, let me out." I found him in the upstairs hall, staring pointedly at the door of the air- conditioned bedroom. Perhaps I should put a litter box and a bowl of water in there. Pity there isn't enough floor space in the bedroom to lay out my chambray, which I still haven't cut. I did draw a thread to straighten the ends. It wasn't cut as straight as the piece I cut the pillowcases from: the waste strip is nearly an inch wide! (For the non-seamsters, four inches of straightening waste isn't uncommon.) Five minutes before five P.M.: Fred finally meowed to be let out of the bedroom. I'd thrown him out a couple of times, though. 16 July 1997 I didn't know that cutting out clothes was an aerobic activity. Got all sweaty in the air-conditioned living room, and came out here to dry in the heat for a while. I'm developing a positive aversion to our down-stuffed leather chair. A total of two and a half yards in the back and front, with a fourteen-inch strip torn off along the side, from which I've cut one back yoke and pinned the other. A collar, collarband, front yoke, and sleeves, and I'll go upstairs and join Dave. He said he was going into work late today, but I don't think he meant this late; hope he called the office before going back to sleep. I tried to urge soda on him; I suspect that the bellyache is heat, rather than flu. Methodist Thrift Shop was yesterday; too hot to shop, but I looked over the books. I bought four E.R.B. paperbacks -- I suspect that I have better versions of all four; already verified The Outlaw of Torn. Also bought a humor book about a Vermont doctor, Bag Balm and Duct Tape. Reads like a collection of weekly columns. And a hardback, The Black Velvet Dress, a socially-conscious historical. I opened it to the scene where the young widow is applying for a job as housekeeper to the rich recluse, took it for a governess story, and bought it without reading the dust jacket. We had a few thundershowers yesterday. Rain heavy enough to beat down the tansy, but I don't know how much water was in it. It's still humid, and the lawn smells like spoiled hay. Caught the OAD! I've never been quite, quite certain that I didn't plant yarrow, so when the buds started turning yellow, I looked up "tansy" to see what color the flowers are. I find that tansy has "yellow flowers in clusters and feathery leaves." I have seen plants with flowers in their leaves. I don't think the leaves on my plant are as feathery as those on the herb that grows along Donny's foundation. Is that one blooming yellow too? (Yarrow is white or pink.) My thread finally arrived, with an apology saying that Craft Gallery moved in May and have been having trouble getting organized. And with a "Justrite by Lacis" shuttle that I'd forgotten ordering. Good thing I wasn't anticipating it, because I am Not Impressed. Avoiding the notches in the bobbin while winding is as much trouble as forcing thread between the blades would have been, and re- installing the removable blade requires he- person type muscle. And the blades also tend in use to slip out of line -- that would be less, had I wound it the other way so as to hold the un-labeled side up. This would also pull the thread away from the notched side of the bobbin. I think they expected you to hold the shuttle in your left hand and wind with the right. Looks pretty, though. The shape is elegantly long and narrow. 18 July 1997 Found my stripe-heeled socks yesterday. The last time I hung up a wash, I was annoyed to find that I'd missed the socks I'd worn the previous day. I've only five pairs of hand-knit anklets, and one pair is cuffless, so as not to get chain-greasy in my cycling shoes, and one pair is too heavy to wear in this kind of weather. Annoyance deepened into alarm when they weren't on the laundry table or in either of the hampers, nor yet under the bed or in my shoes. They finally turned up on the floor behind the kitchen wastebasket, which shares a closet with the main-floor hamper. I've five little skeins of white sock yarn wound off, waiting on the microwave for an experiment involving rhubarb leaves, onion skins, an unidentified stale herbal tea (possibly roast yerba mat), and four pots of boiling water. Just when I finally got everything together, the weather turned hot and muggy. Will the rhubarb be able to spare leaves in September? Perhaps I should pick them now and freeze them. Should be fairly safe if I put a skull and crossbones on the package. That's a bit dramatic for the nature of the poison, but Mr. Yuck is hard to draw. 20 July 1997 Did my dyeing yesterday and today. Discovered that all my dyes mixed together dye fingernails a bleach-fast shade of mildew green. Dumped one container of onionskins into a stainless pot, added a skein of yarn, covered it with the other, and added not quite enough water to wet all the skins. Came out a beautiful reddish rusty brown. May try that one again -- perhaps saving multiplier skins with their purple undertones. (Though that would mean peeling a LOT of multipliers.) The onions were all the same variety, but I don't know which one. I'd like to try red-onion skins! This batch was heated and cooled twice, as there were white spots on the yarn the first time. The second heating deepened the color dramatically. Picked a bunch of rhubarb leaves, including a few stalks, since acid dyes are supposed to work better on wool. Even chopped and pushed down, it was more than five quarts, but my five-quart kettle has a dome lid. Added a quart of water and warmed over low heat, at the same time as the onion pot. Wilted to a thick puree that filled more than half the pot. When it had cooled, I used a slotted spoon to bury three skeins -- I'd read on fibernet that rhubarb leaves could be used as a mordant. By the time that had heated and cooled, it was bedtime, so I blotted the skeins with a black towel and hung them to dry. They were a pale yellow or yellowish tan, as the folks on fibernet said. This morning I strained the rhubarb-leaf potion into my iron saucepan and added the remaining skein, because an iron mordant was said to turn rhubarb dye sage green. It did come out greenish, but this one is not worth repeating. One of the three plain-rhubarb skeins went into the onion bath and came out a sadder and rustier brown than the unmordanted-onion skein. Attractive by itself, but ugly next to the plain-onion skein, which ended my plans to shade the colors from darkest to lightest when I knit them into socks. I find that the skeins look quite attractive alternating light and dark, though. And the two dark browns can be near, as long as they don't touch. Another rhubarb-mordanted skein went into a saucepan with the remaining mat, and was allowed to soak cold until the color came out before being slowly heated and cooled. It came out darker, sadder, and yellower than the skein I dyed with the other half of the mat a while back. Once again, the with-rhubarb and without-rhubarb colors clash. The bath smelled really good, though -- kinder like cinnamon. Should I buy another herbal tea and not like it, I hope I remember to try brewing it with a speck of rhubarb stalk in it. (Perhaps I should dry some thin slices of rhubarb for tea.) The redder onion wool somewhat resembles the wool I dyed with Black Cherry Koolaid. (Wool really does soak up all the color in Koolaid and leave the water clear! I heated it by leaving it in the car on a hot day.) I knitted my gauge swatch with the yarn I soaked in diluted bluing, as I don't see blue fitting into my color scheme. Stained my fingers, so I don't think it will be fast. The idea at the time was for it to wash out completely, so that I could knit salt-and- pepper heels with two ends of the same yarn, and still keep track of what I was doing. But I made too strong a solution, and left the yarn in too long, so I was afraid to use it where blue wouldn't do. I'm eager to get a pair of socks made so that I can see how the dyes hold up under washing and wear, but I have a pair of socks on my #000 needles, and the pair on the #1 bamboo are to have #000 feet. But the upper half of the cuffs are to be made on #00 needles, and my #00s are free. The gauge came out 8/inch, by the way. Persian yarn on #000 comes out 12/inch, and 2/8 worsted works up at 10/inch. The heaviest of the three yarns is the Persian! It's much denser than the other yarns. The yarn I dyed is 3/12 Greylock, the same weight as the 2/8, but softer. Looks thinner in the skein, and feels thinner on the feet. But my only pair of Greylock socks were made on #0 needles; the looser knit might make them feel thinner. Remember that letter I had everyone hunting for? I swept it out from under the dresser today. Don't know how it got out of the suitcase. Also received another letter from the same correspondent. It arrived yesterday, but I forgot to bring in the mail, and Dave found it when he went out for the Sunday paper. This weekend, Hannaford had its grand opening. I didn't go. I'd been seeing the ads for some time before I understood that "Hannaford" is a supermarket. Doesn't fit in with Price Chopper, Shop Rite, Super Valu, etc. 21 July 1997 Windows 95 scrambled my desktop again. I wish I knew what touched it off. Still hadn't got the rhubarb out from under my fingernails when I got to wondering what I might do with some stale imitation chocolate extract. So I wound a little skein and put in in a mustard jar -- meant to put it in the car all day, and did, but the weather has turned pleasant, so I finished it in the microwave. Exceeding uneven; I should have left it overnight. Also shouldn't have squeezed the dye out of it with my hand. Rolled it in a towel, like the others. I'm glad I have a black hand towel! Mixed up some dough for "Oatmeal Crispies - Mrs. Pritchard" and put it in the freezer. I'll slice and freeze it Thursday, for the bake booth. Offered brownies, but Kay said that everyone is making brownies. Not to mention that they price brownies below the cost of the ingredients, and brownies are more trouble to make than oatmeal crispies. Never called to say I'd changed my mind. But, oooh, I want some butter and brown sugar! Now! Raisins just don't satisfy. I bought a quart of chocolate milk at Our Family's Harvest on the way to Super Valu, and it's nearly gone already even though Dave objects to the carageenan. Thought I was on the way to Falvo's, but remembered, just as I passed, that the reason I don't buy meat there is that they aren't open on Monday. But one of the individually packaged steaks at Super Valu was a porterhouse. (Looked like a T-bone to me.) 22 July 1997 Saw three of Danny's cats sunning on the driveway when I came back from carrrying out the trash, so I went to the fridge for the lump of butter that I forgot on the table after supper. The paper was empty the next time I passed by. Garfield says "When you're a cat, everything you touch is yours." Fred and Freed should say, "Everything we touch is theirs." Feels odd: I'm running two loads of wash today, and nothing is desperate for the water. I'm splitting the first load between the grapevine and the Jerusalem artichokes, one third to the 'chokes and two thirds to the grapes even though the need is the other way round. We eat the grapes, and I'm not so much cultivating the 'chokes as tolerating them. I plan to give all of the second load to the rhubarb-asparagus bed. Evening: those who don't sew may skip the chortling over my trip to the Methodist Thrift Shop. I bought a wool blanket for 50. It's frayed and moth-eaten, but not stained -- and it's well over four square yards of good, thick interlining. There was what appeared to be a similar, but less-worn, blanket on the table of stuff they hadn't sorted yet; I'll be back next week, you betcha. In the sewing supplies, there was a plastic bag stapled so wadded-up that I couldn't see what was in it, but the 5 Woolco card of twelve snap fasteners that I could see was worth more than the 10 they wanted for it. Upon opening the package, I find two pieces of clay-type tailor's chalk, a handful of the kind of snaps you put in with pliers, three of them still on a card, four black enamelled-steel #3 hooks (the size I use on my pants), nearly two cards of the matching eyes, thirteen plated-brass straight eyes, one large snap on a fragment of card marked "made of brass", and FIVE of the 5 Woolco cards! They don't say "brass", but do say "rustproof". Total of forty-four nickel-colored #1 snaps and eight black #0 snaps. I hoped for a moment that they'd sold all the bias tape, but they'd only moved it. I can't stop myself from looking for tape suitable for baby gowns. Doesn't smart like the first time, though. 25 July 1997 Toward the bottom, the box of banks to be counted is like the bottomless purse of fairy tales: I keep taking money out, but the amount remaining does not seem to change. And after we get all the bags emptied, we have to fill them up again. One more cookie, then back to the cupro- nickel mine. 27 July 1997 Up from the cellar. I not only finished yesterday's paper today, I read one of the Sunday papers! The Gazette remains in its wrapper, though. Dave made up a slip for three boxes of ones and the two full boxes of quarters, and I'll go to Trustco tomorrow to deposit them. This will leave only odds and ends, and a bucket of quarters, to deal with. Since he doesn't plan to come home for lunch, I'll gallivant afterward, if I can think of a place to go. I need underwear that's available only at Lodge's, but downtown Albany is a bit strenuous for my present mood. I could park behind Oceans Eleven Rosso's Italian Restaurant, and ride my bike to Logical Micros for badly- needed printer ribbons. Could continue on to Kim's. We don't need saimen (ramen, instant noodle soup) this time of year, but it keeps for ages in the freezer. This year we had beautiful shirts that said "Punkintown Fair Staff", but many people took them for their children, and there weren't any for some of the people who really deserved them. I think next year, people should be asked ahead of time to give their T-shirt sizes; then they could be asked whether Johnny really is working, or just running around the fair. One fellow thought me very dedicated to spend three days locked in the cellar, but I had a cooler of milk, soda, and gatorade, and people willing to fetch me food. So I just sat and knitted or read, and whenever Dave got tired of trotting back and forth to sell quarters, he'd rest in the cellar and I'd stroll around the fair. I saw part of the Dean Davis reptile show this year! Too crowded, and I soon went on. Never got a good look at the shirts in the craft tent, either. Too dark to see them, and the crafter, noticing my shirt, sent me off to find Nancy, who plugged in the lights. The next time I tried, it was Saturday night after they'd started packing up to go home. Nice shirts, though; this was the same woman who embroidered the logo I was wearing. I hope that sparkley thread is still pretty after I wash them; it looks like rayon. Time to empty my knitting bag, too. I was so rushed that I just dumped my sweat shirt etc. on top of what was already in there, and something in the bag is awfully heavy. I feel something hard and square at the very bottom. 28 July 1997 It was a tatting-shuttle box. I emptied the bag and put in $3,868 in one-dollar bills, and a box of "coin tubes" that we'd used to help us slip wrappers over rolls of coins. I checked to see that with the stuffed bag slung over my arm, I can still carry a thousand dollars in quarters, packed in two boxes. But not very far. I'm tempted to bring the scale downstairs and weigh them. The quarters weigh fifty pounds, the bagged and boxed folding stuff only ten. Cool! I'm catching up on the mailing lists, and Lace-chat has a story about a woman whose last child had just left the nest; she announced that she was going to remodel the kitchen into a perfect retreat, her favorite room in the whole house. When she was finished, it didn't have a stove. After holding up traffic at the bank for a while, I had a brief tour of Stuyvesant Plaza, followed by a nut stop at Paradise Foods. Didn't spend any money at the Book house, but blew nearly thirty dollars at Alfred's, buying seven or eight yards of dry-clean-only wool that I plan to convert to machine washable. The shorter piece is a very dark brown; the larger is bright red. Tomorrow's schedule reads "mow the lawn"; it's rather desperate. 1 August 1997 The very dark wool is in the washer now, having soaked overnight. Found sixteen yards of "pima cotton" on the doorstep on Monday, washed it on Tuesday, tore it on Wednesday, and put two seams in yesterday just to keep up the momentum. It was labeled 58", but I tore it into one 21" strip and one 41" strip. No selvages, so I didn't tear them off, just pulled the cords, which are so strong and slick that they slip right out of the short pieces. (I left the two eight-yard pieces to de-cord later.) Wish I knew whether fringe edge is what the wholesale catalogs call "leno selvage"; there isn't any dictionary to look that sort of thing up in. I found a "fabric dictionary" on the Web, but it was only a list of the major types of fabric. I found it while trying to find out what "bull denim" is, but the division went down only to "denim", without hinting that there are dozens of kinds of denim. (Including, according to the samples I got from Oppenheim's, a tabby-woven cotton with dobby teddy bears. I suspect that the copy writer thought that "denim" meant "blue".) I tore the 21" strip into eight pillow cases, and tore the 41" strip in half to make it easier to fold up and put away. I've got 34-inch yards here, which implies that the sixteen-yard piece shrank 32". Since I was just barely able to unfold it and stuff it into the washer, I didn't measure it before washing. Now's a fine time to realize that I could have basted two marks a yard apart. It will be nice not to have to co-ordinate my bed-making with my clothes-washing, but I'm going to miss keeping an eye out for cheap fabric to make pillow cases. 4 August 1997 When I first noticed the cattails, I thought they were refreshingly free of purple loosestrife, but it turned out that loosestrife wasn't in bloom yet. Made some Maypo cookies tonight. They are a bit gritty, but MUCH better than the same meal made into "instant" hot cereal. And the grit grows on you. Took a quick ride around the block just before supper, and came back with a cantaloupe and three ears of corn. Reserved one ear to dress up potato cakes for breakfast. 5 August 1997 The other blanket was on the rack this trip to the thrift shop, but it was in worse condition, and it cost me $0.75. Also got an ounce of bright green Red Heart fingering wool for $0.25. Heart-stopping moment when I saw half a dozen matching skeins of black fingering marked 50 for the whole bag, and saw "laine" on the label, but closer inspection showed that it was only 15% wool. In the incoming department they were unpacking what looked like somebody's yarn stash, but I suspect that it is all acrylic. Would have been lovely weather to go by bike, but my battery is dead and I don't enjoy a trip when it's desperately important to get home on time, so I took the Jeep. Still plenty of light when I came home, but the sun was already down, so it wouldn't have been much margin. 8 August 1997 Got all eight pillowcases hemmed, and put the fabric for the other sixteen in the stash so that I won't be making it up just to get it out of the way, as I did with the sheeting. I want the shabby pillowcases to finish wearing out. Hemmed six on Wednesday, putting each one on a pillow as I finished -- so it took me all day to make the bed. Forgot one, after pinning it, so I stitched it after finding a naked pillow when I went up to bed. After hemming the last two yesterday, I tried to iron them. I dampened them and left them in plastic while I pressed other things, then I sprayed them a few times, but the wrinkles never did come out. The stuff also rustles when you put your ear on it, and the sewing-machine needle leaves big holes. I should have gotten muslin from Dharma, instead of Pima from Oppenheimer's. At least the grain is straight. Deposited $1,450 in quarters this morning. I think it took me longer to decide what to wear to the bank than it will take me to dress up to go out for our anniversary tonight. No decisions when you are putting on the best you have; nice but not too nice is difficult. Especially when you're halfway through turning up the hems in your default pants; I decided a few days ago it was time to shorten them a quarter of an inch. Since hard-wear pants fray first at the hems, I like to move the point of wear once in a while. My black "staff" shirt made my second-best denims look really shabby, so I wore the black polywool. On the way back, I finally got around to taking Dave's suit to the cleaner. Now we have to remember to pick it up! Not before Tuesday at 4:00. 10 August 1997 More decisions than I thought: wore the originally-planned outfit, but rejected three others first. Got so distracted that I forgot to wear my pearls. Linguini Alfredo was good, but away too much -- especially since my salad was drowned in blue cheese, and I ate every bit of it. (And mopped the excess blue cheese off the plate with their excellent bread.) Not to mention that I ate some of Dave's prime rib and most of his zucchini. I didn't feel at all well on Saturday. Chickened out of riding to Altamont after noting that what I'd read as "Altamont Rd." was really "Altamont Rt."; the garage sales I'd planned to stop at were up in the hills near Delanson. And the sale that I'd thought was in Altamont was two miles on the other side. Having dressed before re-reading the classifieds, I took a lap around the block, and came back feeling so much better that I was sorry that I hadn't gone to Altamont anyhow. But I wasn't sorry enough to get back on the bike and do it. Stopped at the Extension to look at their composting demo. My, they make it complicated! 13 August 1997 We desperately need this rain, but it's exceedingly dark and gloomy. And not raining much. But the grass is wet enough to make me wipe my shoes. Woke up yesterday to find that it had rained in the night, enough to make the garden look wet -- and all over, not just where I've been irrigating. But I didn't get my shoes wet when walking in the grass; the thirsty blades had sucked in every molecule. Must have been windy; my lawn chair, which I've been leaving in the wall-less woodshed, is wet. It's supposed to thunderstorm later on, so I suppose I should move it into the garage. I did get the onions in this morning; picked up the last just as the first drops fell, and now those grown from the leftovers in the fridge are on newspaper in the garage, and the multipliers are on a cookie sheet in the kitchen. I've been growing just enough multipliers to keep the clone alive, but this crop is enough to eat some and plant some for scallions. 14 August 1997 Somebody on the radio said it was our first real rain since May. Our spring was dry, too; it rained frequently, but never more than a thin film. After the radio had reported an inch and a quarter of rain already down, I went out to dig potatoes -- and turned up nothing but dry dirt. And potatoes, of course. Owing to an unmolested infestation of potato bugs, my fingerlings average about the size of the last joint in my thumb. I put a stuffed pork chop into my smallest skillet, filled the remaining third of the skillet with the smallest potatoes from the hill I'd dug, covered with foil, and baked at 325F for an hour and a quarter. Came out perfect. This was the first time I'd bought Super Valu's ready-to-cook meat, but I think I'll do it again. Provided it has the baking time printed on the package! From the knitlist: ladies should avoid four- letter words: cook, work, wash, shop iron, dust, mend, . . . But "clean" and "sweep" have five letters. :-( Braided a sixteen-inch strand of multipliers while waiting for Dave to get off the computer yesterday. He looked over my shoulder and said "You have more patience than I do." He sits absolutely motionless when waiting for something. Still enough multipliers to cover the cookie sheet, but it was getting hard to pick out those with long tops, so I probably won't braid many more. Just counted eight cars in front of Danny's house, and I don't think any of them are his. Having a professional prepare your sale must be frightfully expensive; I've seen cars parked there all day every day for quite a while, and one day I came back from the mailbox as the head -- saler? -- was unloading a bunch of stuff from her car, and she explained that she'd taken them home with her to put tags on in the evening. It's to be the 22nd and 23rd, she told me. I wonder where the people who come to buy will park -- perhaps in the field in front of the barn? Sally Fox's "Coyote paisley" is a sort of damask -- damask is a pattern of satin & sateen weaves; this is satin, sateen, and two other twills on a tabby ground. I have decided to buy some to make a tablecloth, but I don't plan to order it until the U.P.S. strike is over. Hope that doesn't run me into the Christmas rush. The paper thought it remarkable that other unions are pitching in to help pay for the strike -- I didn't. The strike isn't about part-time work or pensions, but about whether unions shall continue to have power. All of them have a stake in this strike. They'd have done better to go into the agent business. 16 August 1997 Finally resumed work on Dave's new nightshirt last night, and ran into an unexpected delay: it's working out so well that I decided it was worth hand-hemming the collarband, and basting the fells of the sleeve seams to make them presentable on both sides. So I got only one sleeve seam finished, and sewed down the collarband this morning. Worked up a sweat from the exertion. The humidity is suffocating. But I think I'll go up and trim and baste the other sleeve seam. Since I'm basting the fold, I won't have to turn on the iron! It's in four pieces now: the lower front, two pockets, and the rest of it. And no finishing to be done when it's all together. Well, the felling of the side seams. I don't plan to baste those, as they are nearly straight & should press neatly. 21 August 1997 Grump. The lawn mower wouldn't start yesterday, and now the forecast is for rain until time to leave. There will be a jungle to come back to! But I got the garden squared away yesterday. Pulled the oats and packed them in an old leaky foot-tub to finish ripening in the garage. Then I ran the cultivator over everything, switching from the slicing hoe to the flat prongs for the areas where onions had been pulled and potatoes had been dug. Found a few onions. Then I hilled all the potatoes so they wouldn't turn green. It ought be cultivated again the day after we leave, but the garden should be in decent shape when we get back, except for rotten tomatoes. Plugged the laptop in a few days back, and I'm packing files this morning. Also freshening all my backups; since it takes several hours to run Colorado backup, it doesn't run nearly often enough, so I should have fresh floppies of the three books and other important files. Bet Danny is unhappy. We appear to have gotten substantial rain in the night, and substantial rain tapering to showers is predicted for today, but for the two days of his sale, the prediction is enough to discourage outdoor activity, but not enough to water anything. I still haven't seen any ads in the Gazette or Times Union. There was a small ad in last week's Enterprise, saying see big ads in big papers for details. Today would be the logical day to run an ad for a sale that starts tomorrow. When I got the Foxfiber catalog, I looked over the samples and was uninspired. The twills and ducks would make good work clothes, but aren't as heavy as fabrics that cost a third as much. The sheeting is pretty, but I can't think of anything to make of sheeting but bed linen. It would make pillowcases cheaper than ready-made pillowcases of poor-quality fabric, but much more expensive than the pima I bought. The velvet, now, is pretty. For a long time I couldn't think of anything to make with an upholstery fabric that had to be washed hard and often to look its best, but last night -- it took me from 10:00 to 1:00 to fall asleep, so I had time to think about lots of unimportant things -- I realized that it would make a very good spread for a bed in a living room, with matching bolster cases so that you could pass the bed off as a sofa. Of course, dormitories don't usually have throws that cost $35/yard. The "paisley", now, I wanted. A couple of yards would make a special-occasion tablecloth, I thought, and thirty dollars is reasonable for what you would get. So when the U.P.S. strike ended, I measured the table and calculated that I'd need three yards to have enough hang at the ends to match the hang at the sides. $47.40, but I was still game. Then I added in the postage and handling; at $57.35, I dropped out. And there wasn't even any tax on it! NYS is having its tax holiday while I'm in Indiana. Didn't have much in the way of clothes to buy this fall anyway. My only plans for the tax holiday were to cruise for wonderful bargains on summer stuff to put away for next year. And I never find much in the way of summer clothes at the mall; it's either winter-thick, or so thin that you have to wear two layers. The U.P.S. settlement was lose, lose, lose, but the only hope anybody involved ever had was to minimize losses. Even the union bosses hoped only to slow the erosion of their power. 22 August 1997 Planned to wash clothes today, and pack tomorrow. But yesterday, while trying to figure out how to get stuff dry, I decided that if something we want to take is dirty, I'll take a started laundry bag. Got the backups freshened, but didn't pack any files. Got a few rounds of my dye-test sock knitted while waiting for disks to format. One disk, which I tried to use without reformatting, said there was a virus on the boot record. It was one that I'd had in a strange computer! So I formatted both. Later: I find that everything I've put onto the RAM disk will fit onto one HD floppy. Vurra convenient, as I can make backups by saying "copy *.*". When I came back from finding no mail in the box, traffic at Margie's sale had slacked off, so I took a tour. Found that two of the $2 blankets were wool, and couldn't resist that even though they were for a double bed. Put them on top of the rollaways, then found a fresh curtain to cover them. (I'd wondered why I could find only three of the four door curtains!) Way past time to make new door curtains, and make the old ones into tablecloths; they are an inch too short, and there is enough osnaburg left to make another set. When leaving after my early January eye exam, I understood that I was due back in a year, but I got a card a while ago saying call now. Dave said he was due every six months, so after dithering a week or two -- and noting that I can't see to tat or knit -- I decided that maybe I was due every six months too. So when I finally knew just when we'd be gone, I telephoned Kieler's office. The clerk said, "We're booking for late January. Do you want morning or afternoon?" At the time, they said I couldn't schedule my next exam on the spot because they didn't work that far ahead! 23 August 1997 There were crowds at Danny's sale all day both days, but I heard one of the pros say that they were going to have to have another. We bought a beautiful oak shelf with a folding rack under it for the comic books in the bedroom. Discovered, when I sat down to type in the dark, that we've had this machine plugged into the outlet on the light switch all along. Worked for a few minutes anyway, so we must have had the lights on a lot. I've moved it to another outlet -- and I'm going to make a fresh backup before shutting down. All packed, but there's a bit of cleaning to do. Dave sat down on the bed for a minute and passed out. I decided not to wake him when Jimmy dropped by to look at the shed. He wants to move it when Dave is home to approve of the details anyway. Perhaps we'll get an early start in the morning after all! Left one of the suitcases upstairs. As I started down with them, I realized that I hadn't left any underwear out for Dave to put on tomorrow. I put mine into the pockets of the shirt I plan to wear. Bigger laundry bag than I planned on: when I went to pack my little black dress, I discovered that I'd spilled something on it. It didn't look like Linguine Alfredo. I made a new laundry bag today, so it would match the pillow carrier. Also used a brilliant yellow braided cord for a drawstring. I wonder what I've forgotten? Besides my pearls, that is. Hope I remember them in the morning-- can't get them now because I don't want to go back upstairs and wake Dave. Then again, perhaps I'll settle for my Ring of Tatters pin, as I don't honestly expect to actually wear the dress. Discovered a shortage of nice summer shirts. In the summer, T-shirts and poncho shirts answer all occasions that don't call for a dress. And the last few T-shirts I bought were awfully thin. Since I packed my Fibernet T-shirt, perhaps I should take my Arachne pin. I wonder how long it will take to adapt back to the other keyboard when we return? I stuck a bit of correction tape on F6 to help me navigate; this keyboard doesn't divide the F keys, and includes the Esc key in the F row, which I must remember when counting to find the right key. But I can see the white speck in dim light. I can't remember to feel for the bumps on F and J, and keep typing stuff like "jetbiard" -- hey, that sounds like a real word: a prize for the best meaning. 24 August 1997 At the Travelodge in Ashtabula-Austinburg. Boring day, and I missed my nap. 25 August 1997 Read The Jekyl Legacy, Andre Norton and Robert Bloch's sequel to Jekyl and Hyde, in the car. 26 August 1997 Pleasant-enough read, but left a trivial taste behind. Since I'd been looking for "good trash" when I checked it out, it puzzled me for a time that lack of depth annoyed me. I think it was the philosophicating over the meaning of good and evil. You don't mind a lack of meaning in a book that sets out to have a good time, and often find more depth in it than the author intended. But in a book that sets out to instruct you and "make you think", shallows grate your keel. Found myself too tired to enjoy "Orphans of the Sky", so even though it is a juvenile, I knitted most of the rest of the way. Made significant progress on my dye-test stockings, but I left the imitation-chocolate skein at home -- I had filed it separately to avoid confusion with the other browns, and missed it when I packed the skeins. And I'd already been scolding myself for forgetting to wind off a skein of the undyed Greylock in case there wasn't enough, so I don't think I'll be wearing these socks home. Decided not to bring the pearls, and couldn't find the Ring of Tatters pin. Found my Arachne pin, but I can't wear that on the black dress. Put it over a stain on my bluebird sweatshirt. Hadn't tatted a cover because I wear the Smitty's shirt when I want to look clean, but I don't quite have the nerve to wear "Smith's Tavern" around people who don't know that it's a family restaurant. Pain not to go up to see Nancy when we're so close, but it turns out that a week and a half is much less time than it looks like. Could manage if there were bus service, but the best I could do would be to bip up and back tomorrow and the next day, leaving a very grumpy Dave with no car. Considered trying to persuade Dave to go home by way of Tecumseh, but it wouldn't be much more than waving as we pass through, so I didn't bring it up. 28 August 1997 Nancy suggested that we come up on Tuesday and leave early on Wednesday. Neither Dave nor Joe had any objections, so I've got to call Nancy and accept. Which I did on the way to a long walk up Winona Avenue. Made it well past The Flagpole, then went to the Boston Grill with Dave for lunch, then had a long nap. Dave hit a bucket of balls while I was walking. I partly-cleaned three drawers and an undersink cabinet in the afternoon, which gave me new respect for all the cleaning-out that has been done since we were here last. About thirty seconds, and I was exhausted. 30 August 1997 Got some use out of my hand-held yesterday. After Dave went off to hit a another bucket of balls, I set out for another long walk. My purse squawked just as I was entering a steel- framed store, so I hastily stepped back outside, returned Dave's call, and arranged for him to pick me up and go out for lunch. Turned it on when I got up from my nap & found him gone, but it hasn't made any noise. I've been waking at three regardless of when I lie down; at home, I sleep until four! Dave didn't think that was funny. I told Joe that Reader's Digest books are of no value, but they are all the same size and shape. This proved to be of great value when I built myself a workstation after finding that trying to work at Evelyn's typing table gives me a fierce backache in less time than it takes to turn on the machine, open a document, and find my place. The step stool makes a handy copy holder: the lower step is a good place to put a glass of juice. I've punched in the last page of the memoir we found; only seventeen pages, double spaced, but a good many things in it I wish I could have talked to Evelyn about. Now all I have to to is to check it against what I presume to be a carbon of the final draft. I recall saying the same thing about the letter from Bill Dunn, but I don't plan to let a guru anywhere near this one! I'll also leave a disk here as a safeguard. I don't plan to proofread until I get home, as this monitor is hard to see. It appears to have been written for one of Esther's grandchildren, the mother or father of one Sara Grace. I must ask Dave and Joe whether they have a cousin of that name. Arachne Yesterday I finished "The Cradle Will Fall" by Mary Higgens Clark (Pocket Books 1991). Poor job of work; the labor showed on every page. There was never a scene in which someone stood up and said "The name of the killer is" BANG!, but that was the quality of the "suspense" throughout. Then in the final chapter, happenstance happened the other way, and people rushed from all directions like lemmings, bringing the pieces of the puzzle together just in time to save the veiwpoint character, who is bleeding in the hospital morgue from overdoses of coumarin and heparin. All of which I might have forgiven, had the macguffin not been so silly as to lead me to doubt that coumarin and heparin are anticoagulants. Anyone who could describe fetus transplant as a sort of cross between embryo transplant and heart transplant could mis-identify a couple of drugs. Not to mention that the symptoms of the mad scientist's victims did not in any way suggest that they'd been given immune-system depressants. The inside-back cover claims that Clark is female; at least it refers to her as "Ms. Clark", under a picture of a woman. You'd think she would have at least a vague notion of how pregnancy works. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ 3 September 1997 I forgot to charge the laptop yesterday -- and you'd rather I didn't go into why -- so I was surprised when the battery light was green when I plugged it in tonight. It's usually orange after only one day off the charger. Since yesterday was Jim & Nancy's anniversary, we had supper at the hotel in Clinton. They offered a Clintonburger, but it wasn't "a hundred thousand dollars but you get to stay the night" as Dave suggested. Elegant atmosphere and excellent food. I had barbecued ribs -- which came with two wet- towel packets! (Being an elegant eater, I needed only one.) 5 September 1997 Got a carbon-copy postcard from Langan's Motorcars today, saying that I have fourteen days to pick up that part they ordered for me last fall. I hope I remember to scold them about that. When it takes nearly a year, it's poor customer relations to send an almost-illegible standard card with threatening remarks and no apology. 10 September 1997 We have to take the Jeep back tomorrow; the light is back on. I need the exercise of riding back, but it may be too wet to do so. I read today's papers this morning, and just noticed that the Knitlist messages I'm now reading are from September. Cleaned up the other lists a few days ago -- except for Spitzen. I can't read more than one or two posts a day in German, even when I'm just puzzling out enough to decide to delete it unread. Missed my nap yesterday when Dave had a few minutes to take me back to Langan's to pick up the Jeep, and I slept very poorly last night, so I'm still tired from riding back from Guilderland. You'd think I'd sleep harder when I've missed my nap, but it seems to be harder to sleep instead. 12 September 1997 Two-thirty in the morning, and I'm not coming down with a cold after all. It's a sinus infection. Explains why my pillows have been so hard the last few days. I'm reluctant to take a pseudo-eph on account of sleeping, so I'm sitting up to drain for a while. As alert as I am, it probably wouldn't make much difference. And just when I was reflecting on how much good riding after delivering the Jeep had done me. I still was reluctant to make the side trip to the Super Valu to buy a loaf of bread, but because I was wet, not because I was tired. Just as I was feeling very depressed about Ricci's being long gone, I came to Stewarts! No side trip, the porch is unobstructed, and it's small enough that I don't have to change my shoes. Pleasant ride despite the rain, but I made a wrong turn on account of being reluctant to unwrap the map. I didn't "get my bod rained on", but I sure got my gloves, brakes, glasses, rear-view mirror, and jersey-sleeves rained on. Also put my tights in the washer for a rinse, but my shorts and under-jersey were dry enough to hang back in the closet, and I kept the same socks on when I changed. I had both gloves this time. (Left one on the garage floor during the first trip.) When I lay down for my nap after lunch, I was thoroughly in the mood. Just as I got settled down, Fred jumped off the bed, which told me that the truck I heard coming up the drive was UPS & not a visitor of Danny's. I was so groggy that I didn't start struggling into my daygown until he rang the bell. It was a package for Joe Sala. Considered running after the driver, but decided it was easier to leave it on the table for Dave to deliver to Joe. (He left it at the firehouse, I think.) So I got settled again, and Langan's called to say that when they took out the bad sensor, they discovered that my back brakes were shot. (Being groggy, I didn't ask why they didn't notice that when they installed the bad sensor.) I relayed the bad news to Dave, and settled down again. He called back to say I had to write a check for $16.97 to pay R&P for my new bike battery. So I wrote the check. Now it was 2:30, time to start waking up. I felt so tired that I went back to bed anyway, and eventually must have fallen asleep despite the very hard pillows, because I woke up about six feeling extremely groggy. But that wore off when I'd been dressed for a while. We noticed recently that the cordless phone doesn't ring, though it's supposed to. Perhaps tomorrow -- uh, today -- I'll unplug the other three when I lie down. I don't think the headset is supposed to ring; at least, I don't recall having heard it. Dave called me from 20 and 155 on his car radio, and came through loud and clear. Broke up badly down by the bridge, though. I wonder whether he can make contact from the parking lot at R&P? It isn't much farther, but there are a lot of metal-framed buildings on that side of 20. I've also got a couple of sore lumps under my jaw. I think I can go back to bed now, though. Oops. Yesterday was the poets meeting, and I forgot to go. I don't think I'd have enjoyed it much anyway. I took a dose of pseudo-eph before breakfast, and have felt good all day. There are still sore lumps under my jaw when I feel for them, but I'm pretty sure they are smaller than they were in the night. I wasn't properly down for my nap until two, and was up again at three, feeling good. Part of that half-hour delay (1:30 is naptime) was the mouse getting cute. Its latest trick is to decide that I am to use my right hand only, and I didn't believe it could tell, so I cleaned the rollers, and kept trying to make it work when it was where I can reach it with the left hand, or at least find out where the hang-up is. Did not accomplish either. I'll have to have Dave clean it out; machines knuckle under to males. 13 September 1997 Prepared to go for a bike ride, and the zipper on my jersey split. I found that I have a separating zipper in my stash, and sat down to rip out the old one -- after emptying the hanger case looking for my newest seam ripper. At which point Dave came home with the walk- behind in the trunk of the Saab, so I mowed the front lot instead. When the fellow had called to say my mower was ready, I responded "But the Jeep I meant to bring it home in isn't." The latest news is that we can pick up the Jeep Monday. And in addition to muttering that it had been unimportant parts falling off the Toyota, I'm remembering wistfully that we got it worked on right here in the village. But the mower will fit into the Saab trunk if you raise the back wheels all the way, it turned out, so I got my exercise today. Grass wasn't really dry enough to mow, so I didn't try the tall stuff out back. Supposed to be a good mowing day Monday. Hmm. The walk-behind mower got gunked up, the riding mower starts hard, the Jeep has been in the shop twice, the bike has had a new battery and needs a new jersey. I wonder how the Saab is feeling. But I've a brand-new pair of socks. Wore my dyeing-experiment socks today. They are a bear to get on because of the little contretemps with the gauge, but fit perfectly once I struggle into them. Alas, when I moved the plain onionskin away from the rhubarb- mordanted onionskin, I didn't move it far enough. When the sock tops are folded down, the onion stripe on top precisely hits the top of the lower onion stripe. And because they are a few stitches tight, they tend to rumple when I don't fold the cuff down. I can hardly wait to start another pair of Greylock socks, but I mean to finish the black 2/8 worsted pair first. Don't want to play any more musical needles. Did discover that my old brass needles are less inclined to fall out of the stitches than the fancy nickle-plated steel needles, so they are better for holding the instep stitches while I work the heel flap. 14 September 1997 Ugh. Heel stitch is really, really boring. After a few rows on the heel-flap of my black socks, I decided to rewind the latest Babylon Five re-run instead of watching it. Stranding makes a better heel, and goes faster, but I make mistakes when I try to strand two ends of the same thread. A few months ago, I soaked a small skein of Greylock in diluted bluing, thinking that I could knit with one blue strand and one white strand, and then wash the blue out. After discovering that blue spots on cotton withstand multiple washings in hot water and bleach, I put the skein away until I used up the imitation-chocolate yarn and had only begun the toe shaping. The blue yarn turned white when I spit-spliced it to the chocolate yarn, and cotton and wool don't accept the same dyes, so I thought I could use the blued-heel trick after all. Alas, the blue faded only a little in the wash. That wasn't as big a surprise as the rhubarb, which got darker! The plain rhubarb leaf changed from yellowish tan to a sort of gold, and the iron-mordanted rhubarb leaf changed from a greenish-if-you-know-it's- supposed-to-be-green yellowish tan to dark olive! The imitation chocolate got more variegated, with a wider range of hues. It appears to have been a mix of red and green food colors, and different percentages took in different places. It makes a more pleasant pattern than the regular variegation of factory-dyed yarn. The koolaid remained much the same, and I could perceive no change in the mats. The onionskin colors brightened -- and continue to clash with each other. I'm saving onionskins. I've got to try onionskin over iron-mordanted rhubarb. Next spring, when there are lots of rhubarb leaves, I'll dye the taupe yarn I bought at the thrift shop, and include a few sample skeins of white greylock so I can see what is happening. Dave finished mowing the field today. My schedule for tomorrow includes washing a load of whites and mowing around the clothesline. This will take careful timing! 18 September 1997 The summer drought and rainy fall seem to have been good for the grape vines. For the first time since I planted it, the seedless concord has bunches worth bringing into the house. I picked a quart of berries off the stems, cooked them up with a quart of sugar, and put four eight-ounce mustard jars of preserves into the freezer. Also have part of a jar in the fridge for breakfast. While the kettle of preserves was cooling, I hopped onto my bike and went to the store for ten more pounds of sugar -- a dextrose/sucrose mix for more jam, and five pounds of cane sugar because a quart had been was all there was in the cannister. Friday, 26 September 1997 Dave helpfully mowed the back yard for me -- while the clothes were still on the line. He used the riding mower, which throws the clippings fifteen feet into the air. Yesterday or the day before, he wondered how grass had gotten into the pockets of his nightshirt. Oops! I held it by the shoulders when I shook it, and never thought about the pockets. Having blown onto another line, so that it formed a hammock, the nightshirt had been spectacular. No stains on anything, by good luck. Last Friday, the Jeep was finally ready, so Dave drove me to Langan's on his way to work -- only to discover that they had forgotten to tell him a part had been delayed. By way of an apology, he gave me the keys to a loaner so I could go home and come back in the afternoon. I forget the name of the cute little loaner, which is a pity because the experience ruled out that model, should I need a new car. (I bumped my knees on the dashboard.) Name was something like "Riverdust". Must have been a Chrysler, since it wasn't a Jeep. When I picked up the Jeep, I noticed that they had left the back seat up, but thought nothing of it until I tried to put it down at Indian Ladder (where I stopped for milk), and found that a box with wires coming out of it had not been bolted back into place, so that it blocked the seat from closing. There was also a shop towel in the compartments under the seat; I suspect that the mechanic and the manager weren't communicating well. Dave wedged it back -- under, not over, the support as I'd have tried to do it -- but one of the bolts is missing, so it jingles every time I hit a bump. But we couldn't take it back, because Dave's car had an appointment at Dunstan's for Monday through Wednesday. Finally got that peeling strip of trim glued back, and patched some of the rust spots. I went with him Thursday noon, and bought some stamps on the way home. Meant to print the Writers' Exchange Bulletin at the library, but I noticed a typo when I was checking the copy I'd made to see whether the originals were right-side up, so I went to the poets' meeting an hour early that night, and copied it then. Only four people showed up, and only the other three had poems, so we were out of there at eight. I got a couple of rounds done on one of my black socks -- I've just picked up around the heel flaps, and I'm starting the gussets. I think I was scheduled to provide refreshments at yesterday's Auxiliary meeting - - can't think of any other reason to write "bring cookies" on my calendar -- but it was cancelled for lack of interest. And the poets' meeting was all but cancelled; must be a lazy time of year. Got impatient and dyed the taupe yarn with the remains of the previous dyebaths, which I had frozen. Probably a good idea to get the rhubarb-leaf juice out of the food-storage area. I don't think I'll ever again try to save rhubarb leaves, but I might rhubarb- mordant some sample skeins next spring, to have ready when other dyes come into season. I am telling you, gang, carrying the dirty water out in a bucket takes all the fun out of owning an automatic washing machine! It wouldn't be so bad if I had two buckets, but a second plastic bucket is one of the things I've been doing without because each is too trivial to make a special, all-day trip after. One factor in the continued success of Wal-Mart must be zoning laws that "save traffic" by spacing stores far apart, so that each is a separate expedition. With each trip up the cellar steps, I reflect that I've heard a rumor that Wal Mart has twenty-gallon garbage cans, and think that it's worth my while to make a list of all the things I might find there, and devote a day to the expedition. If only Wal Mart had benches here and there, and trail markers along the way. I used to walk all over the Mile Square with no complaint, but I can't handle Wal Mart. I'm older now, but I think it's being continually lost that makes hiking indoors so exhausting. N.B.: take compass on next Wal Mart expedition. 27 September 1997 Sigh. Once again, there is more money in my purse than Quicken says I have. This is very frustrating: I WANT TO KNOW HOW I DID IT. U.P.S. brought "Shuttle Solitaire" back yesterday, including all the pages I told Mr. Pulleyn to throw away. The rejection letter said he'd kept it so long because he'd been trying to decide between my book and a bobbin lace book, and he thought they were shorter on bobbin lace. Stopped just short of inviting me to send it back after the bobbin lace book comes out -- so I'm going to send him the book on glove design for beginning knitters. As soon as I comb its hair and iron its shirt. Went to the Auction Bazaar at the Methodist church today. Didn't bid on anything, but I bought a new winter coat! Thought it was $5, but when I checked out, they told me $3. Hope I don't outgrow it before I wear it. I wear a dress once a year, max, and always wear a short coat with slacks. This coat is a richly-nondescript brown, and appears to have a real fur collar. I'd like to know what kind. It's sparse brown guard hairs and a dense grey down; the label doesn't tell me anything except that it was bought at Wallace's in Schenectady. I presume that's not Wallace Armor, the hardware store that, tragically, went broke this year. So I might as well scratch a few things off my shopping list, the ones that I was going to get if I ever went to Schenectady. Got Emily Ocker's "Knitwear Repair" leaflet, and Walker's "Mosaic Knitting" book in the mail yesterday. (Big day for receiving books.) Medrith said that Walker's second treasury will be out next year. I have the first and third already, both in Scribner paperbacks. I also have the Scribner hardback and the Schoolhouse paper editions of "Knitting from the Top." Now you know why I want bookshelves all over one wall of the sewing room. I'm thinking, south wall and east wall both. And Dave hasn't even made up his mind to move yet. 28 September 1997 An item in today's paper says that only one third of adult Americans are overweight. I wonder how they defined "overweight"? 29 September 1997 Way past time to print out. I'm quite certain that I've printed out the first part of this addition before, but all the envelopes that have additions in them end at page 38. I seem to have forgotten to move my bookmark twice in a row. This is by way of postponing the grape picking. It's raining out, and predicted to shower off and on all day. None of my shoes take kindly to wet grass. I guess I'll wear the sneaks, as I won't mind doing without them while they dry. Too cold to go outside barefoot. Dave hasn't seen to the pump yet. Sometimes it recovers spontaneously, so I should try it again -- I left the last rinse in the tubs. At the last thrift shop before the bazaar, I bought three and a half pounds of handspun, which makes me sad. A spinner might dispose of odd balls, but throwing in the spinning wheel's bobbin has "ignorant heirs" written all over it. 1 October 1997 The jerusalem artichokes have just barely started blooming, and they are predicting a hard frost for tonight. I'll throw blankets over the tomatoes and grapes, but the sunchokes will have to take their chances. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% A Golden Autumn Silence Once upon a stormy time, a long, long time ago, the autumn leaves came crashing down in half a foot of snow. "Sparking wires," said the scanner, "sparking wires, wires down. Stop reporting one by one, it's the whole deleted town." I'm sure talk got more lively, but that's when mine went down. Gasoline won't run the siren, the pagers worked just fine. Firemen were needed everywhere, at dawn, I got back mine. When the sun came out next morning, it melted all the snow. That was sure a blessing: just chop up trees, and go! When everyone needs water, firemen don't need snow. And then the house got quiet. No clicks, no whines, no drone. And then the world got quiet. The chain saws buzzed alone. I wanted to write how fine it was. My typer did not moan. I have a treadle sewing machine, a treadle iron -- lingers And seams in polyester just won't yield to fingers. At last, one day, a NiMo truck went by a-driving slow. I clapped my hands -- if they have to hunt, they've patched up all the breaks they know. It must be soon, they must be near the end of their attack, And sure enough, in two more hours, sweet cacophony was back. Joy Beeson 4 October 1997 I missed my chance! The T-U asked for readers' stories for the tenth anniversary of the October Storm, and I didn't notice, so I didn't send them my poem -- and it's better than the contributions they did print, IMNSHO. So I put it in this newsletter to mark the memorable day. Tadah! When I was putting some summer stuff in the attic today, I noticed that I'd hung two pairs of my hand-knitted socks in the sewing- room to dry. Missed them last washday, and was beginning to be afraid they'd take as long to turn up again as the fuzzy wool. Which I still haven't cut, and it's getting on toward time to wear it. I put about three quarts of grape juice in the freezer today. Hard to judge, because I leave lots of head space for fear of breaking the jars. I've been filling up the head space in layers from subsequent batches of juice. When I see how much work there is in a half- gallon of juice, I wonder what corners the factories are cutting to sell it so cheap. Are they carefully picking out all the bugs and bad grapes? My -- pestle? -- the wooden thing in my ricer -- is turning a beautiful purple. I put a little of the juice onto some Greylock in a jar. I think I'll have to add another layer of dye the next time I pick grapes. I read, perhaps on Fibernet, that peasants used to get deep, permanent shades of blue by soaking in reduced indigo, hanging the yarn out to oxidize, and then soaking it again, up to twenty times. Reminded me of Alice's well water: soak in reduced iron, hang out to oxidize, and in a few dozen washdays you have a bright, ineradicable yellow. Perhaps I should mail Alice some Greylock to iron-mordant for next spring's rhubarb-dying season. I have been thinking of soaking iron scrap in a jar of water, sealed up so it will be a reduced solution. After counting out forty yards of Greylock, I tied the corners of the bandana together to put the ball away, and put the pin back into the chicken. Not exactly a transparent remark. "The chicken" is a crocheted pincushion where I keep my knitter's pins. When I first wound the Greylock into a ball, I had to baste a circle of thread through the corners of the bandana because they wouldn't come anywhere near meeting. Later on, they met enough to pin together. And now I've used enough that I can, with a delicate touch, tie the corners together. Other news: the last time I bought canned sausage hash, I ran my eyes over the shelf looking for other staples to stock up on -- and there was the canned beef I forgot to look for at Kroger! Well, I remember it as Dinty Moore, and this is Hormel, and I think the can is a trifle shorter -- but on Wednesday night, when I seriously didn't want to go shopping, I was glad to remember that I had it I dug some little potatoes, cooked them with a few other vegetables, opened a can of meat, and made a slow-simmered supper in less than ten minutes. (Well, another ten simmering, but I didn't hang around looking at the pot.) Forgot to buy tomorrow's supper today, but with pork, beef, and a scrap of chicken in the fridge, I'll think of something. 5 October 1997 Coming up on the awkward season, when I want to put my long-sleeved shirts back into the closet, but it isn't time to take the short- sleeved shirts out. I got that backward, yesterday, when I found three poncho shirts in my to-be-ironed pile and decided to fold them away in the drawer instead: the drawer is still full of turtleneck shirts. If'n you noticed that I didn't print out last Monday the way I said I would: I got the paper in backward, and didn't notice until I'd used up that day's allotment of ribbon. I've really got to get around to going to Logical Micros and buying ribbons that don't tire so easily. 14 October 1997 Read somewhere that Coca-Cola Classic uses phosphoric acid where all other soft drinks use citric acid. Which is why Coke cleans brass. But I was reminded of it by folks on the lace list saying that any soft drink is good for cleaning your brass pins, and when you see what it does to the pins, you reconsider drinking the stuff. Which led me to look up "phosphoric acid" in the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, but all I found was its specific gravity at various concentrations. Also discovered that all the foods in the PH table are acid, except for egg white at 7.6- 8.0. Perhaps that is why raw egg is often recommended as a poison antidote. My first-aid instructor said it was because it would stick to stuff in the stomach and coat it when it came back up. Don't remember which class, only the teacher saying that if you tip someone's head back and crack an egg directly into his mouth, it will go right down. Swallowing a raw egg doesn't sound like something you could do voluntarily. I suspect that the procedure also helps with the "coming back up" part of the treatment. Maple syrup goes as high as neutral, and lye hominy and drinking water range from slightly acid to as high as 8.0. While checking to see whether there were any animal foods besides eggs, milk, oysters, and tuna, I noticed that I'd overlooked crackers at 6.5-8.5. Must be soda crackers. And it's crackers, not bread (5.0-6.0), that are recommended for a queasy stomach. Oops. Danny is taking out his trash. Tuesday must have come on a Tuesday this week despite yesterday's holiday. I forgot last week, so it's a bit urgent. Foolishly, I went to Indian Ladder for milk yesterday. Got there & said oops, "It Columbus Day." They had bussed 'em in from Mechanicville. I parked so far out in the boonies that I took an exit I'd never seen before -- and next time, I'm going to go to the trouble of turning around. It's a farm-tractor path, and hits the road where it's a high, steep bank. I was considering four-wheel drive, but backed up to take it at a different angle, and spun gravel. (It's a dirt path, but dirt around here has a high gravel content. Unsorted, unfortunately; I steered around some pieces.) Also decided to make myself a pair of milk bags. I discovered that I can carry three bottles of milk in an IGA bag if I put sections of newspaper between them, but the new IGA bags are so long that one must keep the arms bent while carrying them. That gets old pretty soon when there's three heavy glass jugs and a gallon and a half of milk in each bag. But an easy way to carry the milk would take away the motivation to use a vehicle I can park on the porch. I don't get a tenth as much exercise as I need. I'm even planning to mow the front lawn with the riding mower today. It isn't as neat as the walk-behind, but it holds a lot more leaves. 23 October 1997 Arachne Mirror of Destiny, Andre Norton. 1995 Interesting conceit in the magic mirror that can be used as a weapon only by bouncing an evil spell back on the perpetrator, but lacks the sense of magic one reads Norton for. Norton unwittingly explains on page seven: "Those with powers . . . would always be feared and even hated by some, no matter how much good the use of those powers might have done." She is describing her own fear and hatred of machinery. She seems to think that a muscle-powered society could engage in "strip mining." The book desperately needed a copy editor and didn't get one. There were few lapses of grammar, but I had to stop every few pages to untangle a missing word, an undeleted word, a spelling-checkered word, or a broken sentence. Got to be such a habit that once I tried to untangle a sentence that was meant the way it was written. The story works as a classic romance, though. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Been sorting through fabric to choose denim to make some milk bags. I see that I haven't enough bull denim to make another pair of pants, and will need new denims before the end of winter, so I looked at the Oppenheim catalog and didn't find anything suitable. Perhaps Alfred's will have some. Dharma probably has denim, but only in natural or white. 25 October 1997 Got as far as taking the fuzzy wool out of the pile of blankets and putting it on the ironing board. I mean to cut it tomorrow morning, though I can't use the rotary cutter until I buy a new blade or a blade sharpener. My "outmoded" scissors work just fine, as they have for over thirty years. Got the IGA bags dirty hauling milk to the car, and they seem to have shrunk in the wash. Also, the older bag and my knitting bag worked fine the last time I bought some; I may put the bull denim away instead of cutting it. I'm in losing mode again. I was sitting at the sewing machine with two drawstring bags; measured the hem on one, sewed it, picked up the other bag, reached for the hem gauge . . . I hadn't moved an inch, but I had to use a ruler for the second bag. Still haven't seen the gauge. But I know where all the parts to make my pants are. Come to think of it, I didn't get out the pattern. It's got to be in the pattern chest, right? When Dave told his friends he had Bell's Palsy, he learned that everybody's brother has had it. Or father, or a guy at work, or . . . The doctor says it will take about six weeks to clear up. He took a course of steroids when it was first diagnosed, and is now on an antiviral. The steroids, as a side effect, made his sore hip much better. Christine's Restaurant has re-opened as a "sports bar". No detectable change except that there's now a TV in the bar. Couldn't hear it in the dining room. And I'm not sure the "Voorheesville Public Library" sign that used to be on the front of the building was always nailed to the wall in the dining room. We both had prime rib. Orders matched right down the line; told the waitress we'd been married too long. I brought home enough meat for another meal, but Dave ate -- or at least messed up -- all of his. Much quieter than Smittys, but more expensive. We were almost the only customers in the dining room, which explains their effort to draw more into the bar. Voorheesville isn't a prime location for an evenings-only restaurant. I wonder what they did with the rest of the roast? There won't be any after-theater crowd. I got all the leaves mowed up before the rain, and piled them in the garden. Next dry spell, I plan to mow up last year's leaves, which I left in the windbreak last fall. Meant to grind them, but when we finally got the leaf-grinder going, we remembered why we'd quit using it. Went to the library to look up Ann Dyer and Montse Stanley in Books in Print. Nothing in the paper copy, but I remembered that the last time I used it, I was told that it was out of date -- they aren't buying new paper copies because the CD version is cheaper and is updated more often. So I asked how to call up the electronic version. They don't have one. The librarian called up a program of some sort, but whatever it is that it does, it doesn't let you look up authors' names and find out what they have in print. I think maybe it's an order-writing program from their book supplier. Next time I log on, I'll try Alta Vista. 29 October 1997 Speaking of forgetful -- I was grumping that I hadn't a sharp blade for my fabric knife, looked at the clock, and realized that there was just enough time to run to Beyond the Toll Gate, pick up milk and meat, and get back in time to serve lunch. So I combed my hair, ran upstairs and put on a vest and shoes and a cleaner pair of pants, came down and brought my list up to date, jotted it on a slip of paper, put it in my pocket, put on my scarf, picked up my purse and coat, and stepped out into an empty parking lot. Just before bedtime last night, we left Dave's car at the Saab place. Going by bike would have been cutting it fine, particularly since it would involve another change of clothes -- and I haven't gotten around to putting a new zipper in my overjersey yet. Our last bottle of milk tastes like powdered milk. This is the second time this has happened, and I go to the trouble of going to Indian Ladder and paying extra because milk in glass bottles tastes better than the brands carried at Super Valu. One more, and Meadowbrook has lost a customer. I wonder how the powdered-milk taste gets in, and in only one bottle out of six? You'd think a miscalculation with the pasteurizer would spoil all of the batch. Looks like a good leaf-mowing day, and about half are on the ground, but I forgot to buy gasoline before surrendering my car. I want to mow the old leaves before the last installment comes down, so as not to leave the ground bare under the trees. We were right tickled to learn that Bell's Palsy goes away on its own, but we're getting rather worn by how long it takes to do it. Dave is tired all the time, and has missed a few days of work. He might not go back after he comes home for lunch today. He didn't -- he took his newly-cleaned Saab Buick hunting. He's going to look at Oldsmobiles later. Got the knife and the meat after dropping him off, but forgot the milk. We're out of apples anyway. And we need gasoline for the mower. I used the newly-washed bags for the groceries, and their bottoms rode farther from the ground than shrinkage could account for. I suppose that six gallons of milk stretches bags more than muffins, crumpets, and meat do, and my arms may have been bent a little. 5 November 1997 Grump. I washed blacks last Monday, and forgot to include my everyday pants. They have, however, reached a steady state. Dave went to the Oldsmobile place, and decided that he'd really rather have a Buick. He picks up a "Santa Fe Red" Century today. He'll miss the Saab, but, as if to console him, one of its features died on his way home from signing the deal. An indicator, I think. Thought I'd start assembling my pants yesterday, but found that I had first to skein my silk thread, soak it in hot water, dry it, and wind it back onto the spools. I have about a dozen spools of sewing silk, but the only black in my collection is two of the three spools of fly-tying silk -- guaranteed to shrink when it gets wet. It took a surprisingly short time to re-wind the spools by turning a stick in my hands; that bodes ill for having enough thread to finish the pants. And the top-stitching is last. There was a detectable amount of black dye in the soaking water. You'd think fly-tying dye would be water-fast! 7 November 1997 After lunch, I forgot a tall glass mug with an inch of milk in the bottom. Frieda is on the table, stretching her front leg down to the bottom of the glass, and washing her paw. I've half a mind to leave it just to see how much she can get out that way. 9 November 1997 Last night I got out my knitting and sat down to enjoy Babylon 5 -- only to discover that they had substituted Star Trek the Next Generation. Hey, both shows have rocket ships, right? There are only a few rounds left on that sock, but it may have to wait until January, as it's at too ticklish a stage to work on in public. After getting my teeth cleaned last Thursday, I put food and water in my knitting bag and set out to explore Crossgates. Before I got back, I wished that I had taken the cane too; I got so tired I had trouble keeping my balance. I decided that I wasn't ever going to Lodge's to buy underpants, so I found an acceptable substitute at Penny's for only five times as much. The packages said that I need an "8", but my old 6's are downright baggy, so I took one package marked "6" and one with a hand-written replacement label that said "7". Opened the "7" first, was astounded to find it almost too tight, put the receipt and the 6's back in the bag, and put the bag back in the car. Luckily, before making the trek back to Penny's, I looked at the labels inside the pants. These are 6's too. Picked up a second drying rack in another store, but have to use up the Mutsu apples before buying dryable apples & by that time they may have disposed of all the utility grade. But I could have used the extra rack when I dried a loaf of rye bread a few days ago. The rack was labeled "non-stick cooling rack." 10 November 1997 I had my breakfast milk out of one of the souvenir mugs just so I could leave it on the floor with half an inch of milk in it. That'll keep Frieda out of trouble for a while. I read in some TV section that there is another SF show, but I forget the name, and they didn't mention the times. Someday I'll have to find out the name of the genre that includes "The Flintstones", "The Jetsons", and "Deep Space Nine". The only SF in Trek that I can think of offhand is "Trouble with Tribbles", but I'm sure there were less-memorable SF episodes in the first series, and most of the rest were Sci Fi. I haven't been able to stomach enough of Voyager etc. to pass an opinion on whether they are Sci Fi or Barbera. I happened to see DS9's only good episode first, and persisted quite a while hoping for another. During an episode in which a re-named Israel and bumpy-faced Arabs ruthlessly settled their differences, I finally twigged to the genre. 11 November 1997 Not too long ago, Dave wondered when WWI had ended. I looked up "armistice" in the unabridged and learned that the treaty was signed in 1918. I also learned that "armistice" means a temporary cessation of hostilities. The name of the day proved to be all too accurate. 12 November 1997 The primary lesson of the au pair trial is that our mother country has lost the last vestige of its famed stiff upper lip, and its love of decorum. When sentenced, the girl demonstrated the lack of control of which she had been convicted by getting down on the floor and throwing a tantrum. According to the press, the British called this "sobbing piteously", and felt even sorrier for her than before. Some pellets have fallen, but I believe that these are our first genuine snowflakes -- and it looks as though they'll be visible on the ground later in the day. I sat down to knit for a while, and Frieda did her usual. I hissed and yelled "Get out of my face!" for a while, then the little light bulb lit up, and I put a couple of tablespoons of milk into a juice glass and set it on the floor. Provides not only peace, but a timer: when the cat finishes blotting up the milk, it's time to put the knitting down and get back to work. 16:13 Somebody on the scanner asked that DOT be notified of a slippery spot at the top of Letter S. A few seconds later, someone who probably wishes to remain anonymous said "It's staaarrrted!" Just heard that a Fed Ex truck is stuck on Letter S. After a summer of forgetting that we have that stretch of road, we are going to be talking about it a lot for the next few months. It was snowing fast when I was coming home with Frieda, and I could see snow frosting the trees on the hill when I was pointed that way, but nothing stuck to the road, and the hill seems to be its previous color, near as I can tell now that the sun is behind it. The vet had good news and bad news for Frieda. The good news is that she doesn't need any more FLV shots. The bad news is that that is because the average survival time of an FLV victim is more than her life expectancy. It isn't quite that stark: it weighs heavily that cats that make it to eleven without catching FLV probably aren't going to get it, and that the shot has more risks than was previously supposed. Set off to the vet's ahead of schedule -- I caught Frieda napping peacefully, and had no trouble getting her into the cage. Closing and latching the door was another question entirely. She sent "error" at about 0.5 wpm all the way, and kept complaining after we got there. Perhaps the fluffy, pop-eyed dog waiting ahead of us was insufficiently threatening. And then she set off the fat old Siamese in the third woman's arms. I did not make any progress on the sock I took along in case we arrived early. Vet said Freed was very healthy, which Freed proved by continuing to complain all the way home again. But not so loudly. She didn't forgive me until I started putting pork ribs into the baked stew we're having for supper. She didn't get any. Dr. Bull has a straightforward approach to gaining access to her patients. She picked up the carrier and poured Frieda onto the examining table. 14 November 1997 9:40: I swept the steps just before Dave left, yet when I swept again just now, the snow was much thicker on the steps than on the rectangle where his car had been. It still swept like sugar, but it's coming down in flakes now. Prediction is for turning into rain, then into flurries. I forgot to stop at Super Valu on the way home from the poets' meeting last night, so we are out of milk. Walking to Indian Ladder would be a good motive for taking a little exercise, but there is nothing to walk on between here and there. Besides, I don't think I could carry three gallons back. When we lived in The Meadows, I used to walk back from the supermarket with a glass gallon jug in each hand, but I don't recall doing it with mittens on, over ice. Not to mention that Indian Ladder halves have no handles; I'd have to use a backpack. 16 November 1997 Went to Indian Ladder by Jeep -- without 4- wheel drive, since the lever was stuck. Luckily, "1-2" got me through the mouth of the driveway, after waiting -- not too long -- until I had the whole road to flail around in. Doug unstuck the lever for me when I couldn't move the Jeep out of his way when he plowed our parking lot. Got red cabbage, celery, and a half peck of Golden Delicious while I was at it, and am prepared to hunker in until tomorrow. Sunny at the moment, and snow is now and again crashing off the copper roof of the bay window. Traffic was light Friday, on the road and on the scanner. Didn't hear of any wrecks, nor any references to Letter S. Saturday's paper said there were "hundreds" of accidents, but I had the impression that New Yorkers were finally starting to remember that they'd seen white stuff before. Perhaps it was that this "storm" was remarkably early, so that people realized that it was a special occasion. We got more snow last night, but it has already melted off the blacktop, together with the packed-transparent parts of what Doug left. 19 November 1997 Yesterday, Dave came home wearing bunker pants & I said, "Oh, it was a real fire!" He said, "Nope, it's cold out." On Fibernet, there was a discussion of whether the silkworm's diet could color the silk. (Conclusion: cocoons yes, silk no.) Along the way, someone remarked "Adult silkworms have no mouths, but live only to breed and dye." To which someone else responded, "But I thought you said that the silk is always white!" I've enough sample skeins to make another pair of socks. I'm amazed at how many colors of brown there are, and I'm beginning to realize why brown was always regarded as much more casual than black. Any peasant can find something that will dye his clothes a pretty brown, but only the nobles can afford to buy the skill and ingredients that make black. My latest experiment was the wrapper leaves of red cabbage, which imparted beige. Rumor has it that cooking red cabbage with soda gives moss green; I'm eating cabbage as fast as I can! Dandelion root also makes a beige, more intense if you cook it with vinegar. Rhubarb leaves and roots make golden brown, and you will not be at all surprised to learn that rhubarb doesn't care whether you use vinegar or not. Rumor has it that you can get a pink that photo-oxidizes to blue out of rhubarb roots. If I remember that next spring, I'll try the Valentine roots. The roots I used this fall came from the rhubarb I found growing wild, which hasn't much color. The Valentine has altogether too much color, so that rhubarb sauce looks much better when I mix them. Cooking yarn with vinegar and a tin-can lid makes a nice rust; rumor has it that when you overdye this with rhubarb leaves, you get green. (So far, green is a rumor.) I'm wearing the socks I made with the previous batch; with repeated washing, the plain-onionskin stripe has become distinctly orange. Burnt orange, of course. The onions dyed over rhubarb leaf have changed color very little, which is what they mean by saying that rhubarb is a mordant. Oddly, dying orange onion over golden-yellow rhubarb yields a nearly-neutral brown. It's reddish, but only by comparison to the greenish brown of the rhubarb-mat. Which is greenish only by comparison to the rhubarb-onion; it's merely drab when I cover the onion and compare it to the Koolaid red of the next stripe. 21 November 1997 According to SPELL/Binder, at Northern Illinois University, "When it comes to drinking . . . in the residence halls, we give the students three shots." The spokesman appears to have meant that students are expelled after the third offense. 23 November 1997 Dave got one of those passes from Mobil that spares you the trouble of inserting your credit card into the slot on the pump. I told him I'm not interested until they come up with a pass that saves me the trouble of putting the nozzle into the tank. Found a page about rhubarb that says that oxalic acid reduces metals. 24 November 1997 Sometime during the night, Windows 95 got helpful and put all our "shortcuts" into alphabetical order. Dave thought it was because the computer was reset abnormally when the power went out, but that was during the day, and the shortcut for the letter I finished just before going up to bed was in the right place. Ah, well, the new order didn't take as long to create as the old one, and it's more logical. 'Course that's just Group Joy -- but all the other groups have only a few icons each, except for those that only Dave uses. 25 November 1997 Just heard on the radio that Hussein has a ton of DX. I hadn't thought they were talking about that Hussein. 26 November 1997 A sig from the lace list: Ralph Lindberg N7BSN If Windows is the answer, I -really- want to know what the question is. 27 November 1997 I ate too much. 28 November 1997 A sad note after a festive day: Nancy called to say that Carl is not going to need the wheelchair ramp the fire company had planned to build for him. We had more-or-less been expecting it. 3 December 1997 Ugh! I've done it again. When I bought stamps yesterday, I carefully selected the least objectionable of the 32 stamps on the bulletin board, but simply told the clerk how many two-ounce, three-ounce, and additional-ounce stamps I wanted. Instead of tearing twenty stamps off a sheet of definitive fifty-fives, he (or was it she? I've forgotten which clerk was on duty at the time) just naturally handed me a sheet of twenty commemoratives -- in the design I detest the most. And I'll have forgotten all about it by the time I use up twenty 55 stamps. But the dime has fallen: I changed my shopping list to read 25 two-ounce stamps. They'll never have a sheet of twenty-five commemoratives, and it's a neat fraction of a sheet of definitives. I do wish they'd put George back on his stamp. I'm tired of having to make a statement every time I select a stamp. I'd probably buy the flag stamps if I had the option of buying definitives instead. It's un-American to wave a flag at gunpoint, and disrespectful to the flag. 8 December 1997 The dime drops. When I was through playing with the rhubarb roots, I canned the leftovers, intending to store them with the poisons in the garage. Then I realized that the garage sometimes freezes, which would break the jars. I considered taking them to the cellar, but didn't want to put them with the other canned goods. There's little chance that anyone would eat the ugly things even if they weren't marked "poison", but it's a matter of principle -- and not getting into bad habits. So they loitered in the entry, getting in the way -- until today, when I took them to the cellar and put them under the laundry table with the bleach. It's even easy to remember, since both are meant to change the color of fiber. We've been thinking a lot about our proposed move. I'll need at least two years to get organized! One thing I'll have to do is to find out what we've got packed into our crawl- tunnel attic. We'll have to take out everything to see anything. All I can remember is my wedding dress, and two looms. One loom is a rigid-heddle table loom that came out of Mom's attic, good only for weaving rag rugs. I still have most of the box of rug warp I bought. I understand that unbleached- cotton string is ecological and expensive now; it was the cheapest, at the time. I tore up a worn-out white chenille spread and made two or three yards of thick, fuzzy rug that was very useful for protecting my bike when I carried it in the trunk of the car, but the white rug disappeared somewhere along the way. If I ever do any more weaving, it will be after I decide to give house room to a floor loom, so I'll have to give the rigid-heddle loom to somebody. It would be a good child's loom, because it's cleverly simple, and because one can make something useful in a reasonably short time. The other "loom" is a peg frame that Uncle Ralph made for Mom to twine rag rugs on. Mom twined a few inches of rug and gave it to me to finish. I don't think I'd gotten across the rug once before I knew why she'd given up on it, even though it was making a very nice rug. Might be a good thing for a kindergarten teacher to keep leaning against the wall for when one of the kids is whining for something to do. I've a box marked "rug rags" in my fabric stash, which contains several small balls of cut strips; that must have come with the twining loom. I think I'll keep my quilting frame; it doesn't take up much space folded, and I might want to use it again someday. I can keep it in the attic of the hobby shop, with the family tools -- perhaps we can have a quilting party in Dave's gazebo some summer. A few days ago Dave told me that he had noticed that the gazebo is rotting, and that he plans to tear it down and build or buy a screened-in gazebo with an antenna on top. The lake should make a good ground plane. I'm planning to fulfill my life-long dream of built-in bookshelves covering an entire wall, and there's space for shelves on the adjacent wall, too. Since the proposed shelves are in my sewing room, I'll make the highest shelf wider, to hold fabric and boxes of manuscripts. And I still plan to take the two stacks of "barristers" that are in the living room, and put them in the parlor. Don't know whether Dave knows that yet. With those and the Steinway, it's going to be a bit crowded in there. 12 December 1997 I cooked up three twenty-yard skeins of Greylock in red-cabbage leaf. Yesterday I simmered a skein, a pinch of soda, and some chopped cabbage-wrapper in snow for an hour, then let it cool overnight. It came out of the kettle pinkish-beige, but dried to a warm shade of dust bunny. Today I dumped in the tin-can lid and the rusty vinegar-water it had been marinating in and simmered another skein for an hour, then cooled it for an hour. This one came out greenish dustbunny. Then I dumped the bath -- trying not to mar the fresh white snow in the flower bed -- washed the pan and the tin-can lid, and cooked the lid the same way with another skein, more snow, and a glug of vinegar. This one came out a greyish shade of pale pink-lavender. I'm planning to buy a box of alum when I shop tomorrow. If I feel energetic, I'll go hunting for some Christmas-tree decorations to wear at the NSVFD party tomorrow night; the invitation said "holiday attire". First stop must be at the post office, to buy stamps and mail the Christmas cards. I wanted to use the daisy wheel to address them; Windows 95 was even more unco-operative than usual, so I discovered that the laptop has a parallel port! No muss, no fuss -- but when I went back to type a forgotten address, I learned that I must have the document in Drive D. Would probably work in A if I changed "!DW" to "!D:\DW", since the problem seemed to be that it had not read file DW. 20 December 1997 Bought thirty feet of red beads for the party, and put a gift-package bow in my hair. It looked rather good, which disappointed me -- I was aiming for garish. Used the daisy wheel to print out a manuscript today, since the ribbons for the 24- pin printer are getting a bit iffy. This time there was muss and fuss -- I'd meant to mail it yesterday! I may up and buy a new battery for the laptop. About $70, Dave says, and this machine has always been a bit flaky. The manuscript was for a humor column I sent to Threads. If they buy it, I assure you that you'll hear about it. Christmas must be worrying me. I dreamed last night that I was able to buy a single game hen. They are always sold two to a package. I'm planning to cook a frozen game hen on the rotisserie. Might buy a fresh broiler instead. Falvo reserves fresh turkeys. I wonder whether one can order a chicken in advance? Probably too late already. Today I tried a pinch of alum in the remains of the last red-cabbage bath, the one with iron and vinegar. Silvery dustbunny. 24 December 1997 There are a few things that I can do only by daylight, so when I read an ad for a marvelous new light that isn't incandescent, fluorescent, or halogen, I sent off for more information. Yesterday, I got a beautiful slick, thick catalog telling me that the Microsun light is much, much better than incandescent, fluorescent, and halogen. Not a clue as to how it works or whether it flickers -- Fluorescent lights give me a headache, so I don't want anything that flickers. But the catalog doesn't include one single task light, and the dozens of table lamps, floor lamps, and "uplighters" are the same three designs, differing only in their decorative aspects. I guess that tells me everything I really need to know. Yesterday, Dave told me that Thursday came on a Tuesday this week. Does that mean that we eat at Smitty's tomorrow? A few weeks ago, Dave wondered what we will do on Saturday nights after we move. I said that we could occupy the first year or two auditioning replacements. I finally resumed work on Dave's summer nightshirt yesterday. The last time I took a stitch in it was in Indiana, on Evelyn's old machine. It is nearly worn out -- she'd been using it as a desk, and making her baby gowns and bandages on a portable. When I set it in motion, Dave looked up and said "I remember that sound." Brief pause. "I don't remember it being so loud." I basted in a few pleats yesterday, and basted in a few more today. Should I use this pattern again, I'll make wider pleats and fewer of them! Or baste the pleats by hand, so I can do it while watching television. Only a few more days before the only new show on the air resumes broadcasting. Hope I don't forget to set the VCR. They are going to show everything at once, so perhaps I should have asked for extra tape for Christmas, so I can save some of the episodes for later. I was annoyed to receive a check in the mail. I went out Monday and did a stay-home- until-after-Christmas load of shopping. Yesterday, the annual rent on my field came, and that's too big a check to leave on the fridge for a week, so I had to go to the bank this morning. Decided that as long as I was in the Super Valu parking lot, I'd run in and get a replacement for the can of dried beef I opened recently. (They have only Armor dried beef, which is strictly for orderves and garnishes, so I didn't buy any.) Did buy a mince pie, though. We each had a slice after supper. Dave wasn't planning to come home, but I cooked all the chicken thighs anyway, so there was enough to go around. I did my latest trick: put raw meat and vegetables in a covered dish, bake one hour at 350 F. Unbelievably easy, and quite tasty. He came home just as I was about to take it out of the oven. When he comes home after saying he planned to eat elsewhere, he usually has to forage in the cellar for something to warm in the microwave. 25 December 1997 A quiet day, and the feast didn't make too big a mess. Served at noon, and foraged for supper; there is, nonetheless, a significant amount of meat on the carcass of the game hen. It was much easier to put away than the turkey we had for Thanksgiving! There is still some mince pie left. I may do something about that before going up to bed. 30 December 1997 Sometimes things work out. After mopping the floor, I wanted to wash the rugs -- AWK SCRICKLE, I forgot to take the white clothes out of the washer yesterday! When I went down to the cellar, I discovered that I'd also forgotten to put the white clothes into the washer. Friday will be soon enough. I have plenty of household linen. This was my first trial of the new mop bucket, and it works much better than the scrub tub. The high sides contain splashes when I fill it, and the narrow profile means that when I empty it, all the dirty water goes into the toilet. Sponge mops were old hat when I bought mine thirty years ago; why is it just now that somebody is making a bucket to fit them? While I was reflecting on the antiquity of my mop, one of the sponges shredded off. I had tried to replace it months ago, and learned that sponges no longer bolt onto the mop with wing nuts. I guess I'll have to buy an entire new mop, even though I like my double-sponge mop much better than the current design. In the throes of Thanksgiving shopping, I bought a box of condensed mincemeat, and it has sat on top of the fridge ever since. Tonight, I noticed that there is a recipe for drop cookies on it. So I mixed up a batch. Left out half the butter & they taste plenty buttery, though it took main strength and awkwardness to mix the dough. Also substituted brown sugar for white, and added a cup of whole almonds. (We're out of walnuts; must be time for another trip to Paradise.) Sat down to play with the computer, congratulating myself on having evaded the family tradition of burning the last sheet of cookies, then got up to make sure I'd turned off the oven. I had -- and there was a sheet of raw cookies on the counter.