I have reached the heel on the second pair of Fuzzy Feet, in Knit Picks Wool of the Andes, color Hollyberry.

Before casting on for the Fuzzy Feet, I finished the fifth bawk. I still have three more to make, but I am getting them done in a week pretty consistently, so I think I can finish the remaining three this month.

 Even with a little extra-curricular knitting.

Yesterday I went to the library to finish my second round of fact-checking. This was what greeted me as I left the driveway. We are getting some color in the trees at last. I was afraid the leaves would just turn brown and fall without giving any show first.

I rarely go to the library, so I took the time to check out the knitting books before settling into the reference section. I also took the opportunity to copy out a couple of patterns — Na Craga from Starmore’s Aran Knitting, which is a nice reference book but not one I would need to own, and the riding jacket from Loop-D-Loop. #2 daughter loves that jacket, and I agree that it is quite nice. She had wanted me to buy the book, but as I sat leafing through it yesterday, I found that my initial impression of it remains: it is one of the ugliest knitting books I have ever seen. This is a very popular book — the Corkscrew Scarf alone has spawned a fan club. But — what about the picture of the pale guy in the slip-stitch kilt and a nipple-length poncho with a cowl neck that covers his chin. Am I the only one who finds this freakish?

So I merely Xeroxed the pattern. There is no way I could make it in time for Christmas, but there are many months after Christmas…

Now, I may eschew freakish knitting — and I do; life is too short for that — but I am not averse to a little freakish baking. #2 son and I once made a Coca-Cola cake when we found the recipe while traveling, so you know that I am telling you the truth. I found this recipe in my mailbox the other day, and Jell-o was on sale at the grocery, so I made weird red and green Jell-o cookies for this week’s HGP freezer goodie. You see the odd little creatures being packed into a freezer container here. I don’t know how they taste, but I am sure that they will look very festive on a buffet table.

With my errands and research and baking done, I settled in for some knitting and reading. I am still reading Unweaving the Rainbow, but I find that this book doesn’t go well with knitting. In chapter three, Dawkins explains exactly how rainbows work, and why they are the shape they are, and all that, and I was so riveted that my hands just stopped moving. He also has quite a bit of poetry in here, and the rhythm of knitting rarely goes with the rhythm of poetry (Longfellow, maybe), so I keep stopping for that, too. So I have started the Robert Barnard novel as an alternate.

Now, if you fully understand photosynthesis, does it make the colors of the trees less marvelous? Dawkins argues that it does not, and I certainly agree. But he is correct in his claim that there is hostility toward science. Sighkey sent me this article,  which makes a political connection to anti-science feeling in the U.S. Dawkins is British, so his concerns are not about the U.S. political scene, but there are a lot of scientists in the U.S. who are concerned that the present administration is hostile to science. It seems to me that this is largely because they want to do things and make policies that are contrary to what would be indicated by common sense and current knowledge about the world.

If you want to make decisions about energy, medicine, research, and education that are completely out of step with the facts, then what can you do but attack the people who collect and disseminate those facts?

Dawkins has, thus far, been talking about people’s emotional reactions to science (and he has some very interesting things to say about the nature of truth, too), but sometimes there is an agenda.