In response to comments, let me tell you a little more about the socks. Well, sock at this point. This is being done in Knitpicks Essentials on a size 1 sleeve needle. I prefer circular needles, even when I’m knitting on the flat. Erin, for example, is being done on circular needles (size 2). I’ll switch to sleeve needles (which are small circular needles) when I do the sleeves, and I’ll work them in the round. I’ll switch to dpns when I do the heel of the sock, back to the sleeve needle for the foot, and then to the dpns again when the toe is too small for the sleeve needle.
Since I’m doing this in stockinette, with just a few rows of ribbing, I took some elastic thread and crocheted around the top with it. This needs to be crochet, because you can crochet onto the surface of something. Back in the day, all knitters could crochet; it was considered a normal skill for finishing. If you are a
modern knitter and you don’t know how, then this is a great time to learn! Either that, or you could pick up stitches in the elastic thread and knit them, and trust that your sock tops won’t show. You can buy this thread in white or black at your local fabric store. I do this trick on cuffs, too, if they seem inclined to stretch out.
However, thanks to the politics, I got some more done on Erin.
My husband is a big fan of CNN. Usually this means breathless accounts of celebrity gossip or overemotional reports on some hapless crime victim or something, but I’ve actually been joining him to watch the campaign. It’s interesting this year. His Lao-English dictionary claims that a Democrat is in favor of freedom, while a Republican is in favor of customs. He was a little confused, because he had thought that one of the parties would be the communists. My husband has lived in the United States for 30 years, but he has an amazing ability to ignore that fact.
I usually think of voting as the equivalent of hiring someone. Our political system is designed so that no one person can have enormous amounts of power. However much the president may wish to be king, he doesn’t live in the age of absolute monarchy. So, even though we Americans do generally feel as though the president is at fault when things are bad and it is a tragedy when the other side wins, we actually most need someone who won’t humiliate us in the world at large.
My family’s current jobseeking adventures make me notice that the resume isn’t everything. #1 daughter, having quit school to get married and then followed her Navy husband around for some years, doesn’t have the education or the experience she would like to have on her resume. But having someone who looks and sounds like her in the front office automatically raises the tone of an organization. She now has a nice position in the office of the District Attorney four hours south of us. She had a good recommendation, she is smart and works hard, and they will be lucky to have her, but we have to recognize that her face is her fortune.
#2 son had a group interview with Coldstone Creamery. He is just 16, a small guy, has never had a job before, doesn’t have a driver’s license, and is generally not a shoo-in for a job. He does, however, have an exceptional quality of enthusiasm. When they divided into small groups, he led his team to write a new jingle for the company, organized the others into a doo-wop group to back him up in singing it, and enjoyed the process. When the interviewer asked whether he was the leader of the group, he modestly said, “We really haven’t established that.” We don’t know whether he’ll get the job, but I would like to have that level of excitement in the sales staff at the store.
Just so with the candidates. Bill Richardson may be smart, experienced, and bold enough to speak out against the war, NCLB, and other stupid shenanigans of the current administration, but he isn’t cool enough to hang with Clinton and Obama, so he’s out. Huckabee didn’t accomplish much as governor, besides wasting a lot of money weighing schoolchildren, but he’s the one of the Republicans whom I cannot imagine arranging a hit. I hope to vote against him in November.
The CNN guys were talking a lot about “style over substance,” but maybe it’s just like my kids’ job interviews. Maybe some of the qualifications wouldn’t come across on paper.
I learned to crochet when I was about 10. I learned to knit when I was about 40. I can crochet in my sleep, to watch me knit is not a pretty sight. however when I knit in public places no one every looks twice or says anything, when I crochet in public places knitters have more than once made the comment that “you’re just crocheting” as though it takes no skill. from what you have written about knitting and crocheting on one item, we should learn to do both!