Exclusive!

Before you get too excited, no, this is not my Polka Purl Dots. This is Véronik Avery's PPD, the very one we've admired in IK. She was generous enough to send me this photo in response to my recent whining about having no photos of the back of PPD. She doesn't have a photo of the back, but this one shows the belt. Plus it's helpful to see it flat, isn't it? Since a lot of knitters seem to be embarking on Polka Purl Dots, she agreed to share this photo with all of us. Thanks, Véronik.

Click here to see the same photo bigger.

Did ya vote, punk? Well, did ya?

Is everyone (in Canada) tired of hearing about the election? It's strange to be away from it; I can read the news on the Internet, of course -- and yes, I did vote, unlike 39.5 percent of the nation's registered voters -- but I have no idea whether it has captured people's imaginations, whether people are talking about it with their friends. (Are you?)

I particularly liked a description I read, of Conservative leader Stephen Harper as "Stockwell Day with a library card" (here). That's funny. And was anyone else underwhelmed by the unbelievably white-bread names of the three front-runners? Welcome to multicultural Canada, where you can vote to elect Paul Martin, Steve Harper, or Jack Layton! Sheesh.

I have a craving for hummus, pita, and Israeli salad.

No typhoon yet, but it's still out there...

Let's join hands and pray

...for a typhoon! Yeehaw! This is my third typhoon season in Taiwan, and I've never seen a typhoon. Tropical storms, yes. Even got a day off two summers ago in anticipation of a typhoon that failed to materialize. I want to see a typhoon, damn it -- from the comfort of my sturdy concrete box of a home, of course.

But what's that on the horizon? Why, it's Typhoon Mindulle! It's headed this way -- check out the satellite image (it's cool to click on "Loop 12 hours"). You can read about it in the local paper, too. (This story also covers record high temperatures in June and a run on "flavored shaved ice" in the city of Hsinchu.)

Now, I just want enough of a typhoon to get a day off and see some spectacular weather; I don't want it to be destructive, and I don't want anyone to get hurt. All right? Plus, a typhoon will blow away the stinky polluted air and freshen things up around here, however temporarily.

So, are you with me? Remember: a spectacular, non-destructive typhoon. Thanks! I'll keep you posted.

p.s. I swear I checked for corrections to Polka Purl Dots when I started it a week or so ago, and I swear that this was not on the website then! A different cast on, for pete's sake! (Oh, well. Too late.)

The cat that ate Taipei!



Huge Bea! Teeny buildings! Look out, Taipei -- it's Beazilla!

I put up a few photos from the weekend on my photo page.

And two balls of Cascade Fixation in the gnarliest shade of green arrived in my mailbox last Friday, so I got started on my first sock for the Six Sox Knitalong:



What is that green? Kelly green, I suppose. It reminds me a bit of highway signage. I'll never be at a loss on future St. Patrick's Days, anyway. The Fixation is fun: springy and stretchy. I hope I'm not overstretching it as I knit. These will be some soft and comfortable socks, and a bonus is that I only have 60 stitches in a round instead of the usual 72, so it's speedy. I did have time to knit a few pattern repeats at the Foreign Affairs Police earlier, so I'm ready to work the heel -- short rows, I think. I think I'll carry the pattern down the top of the sock, too.

The beach

Continuing along on the Do Something Every Weekend Until I Go program, we went to the beach on Saturday, where there was a wingding in honour of Canada Day. Bill and I took the subway to one stop short of Danshui, and from there we were taken to the beach (Baishawan) in a bus with a few dozen of our countrypeople (did they bring those Mols*n Canadian T-shirts all the way to Taiwan with them?).

As always, it was great to get out of the city, especially now that summer has really and truly begun. The sand on the beach was fine and soft, and the water was warm. I tend to assume that oceans are cold, so I didn't bring our swimsuits. Billy, who is far more daring than I, was down to his tighty-whities in no time and out in the water. A drink or two later, I was heading in too, wearing my shorts and bra (left my Knitting Is Sexy T on the beach), and it was worth being soggy the rest of the day and evening. Unfortunately, the lovely sand did not continue into the water; under the surface were rather unpredictable layers of coral. (Bill and I both have our share of tiny scrapes and cuts from that.) I hit my knee hard at one point, and my first thought was, "Damn! I bashed my knee on the coral!" But my second thought was, "Cool! I bashed my knee on coral!"

We only saw a couple of people we knew -- like The Taipei Kid, who freely admitted he was there because the Canadian parties are more fun than the American ones. This was our first time at one of these organized Foreigner Events. And it was just as goofy as I thought it would be (trivia questions about extreme Canadian temperatures, lots of Tragically Hip songs), but we had a good time.

A question to the organizers: How could you underestimate the supply of veggie burgers for a bunch of Canadians?

I took photos, but I didn't get around to putting them into the computer yesterday. Tonight, for sure, so check back.

On my lunch break today, I have to go to the Foreign Affairs Police station to have my visa extended. I brought some knitting. Is it very wrong to hope that when I arrive and take a number, it's, say, 445, and that the next person to be served has, say, number 201?

Miss Chatelaine

My mother is the kind of mother who gardens, volunteers, and swims in the lake, not the kind who throws cocktail parties, loves shopping, and has to put on her face. When I was a kid, there were times I wished she had more girly things, like makeup and perfume I could try on. She's never even had her ears pierced. She's Birkenstocks and library books, not high heels and Cosmopolitan. (So am I, but I didn't know that then.) So I remember being very excited when once a month an older lady at church who subscribed to Chatelaine would give my mom the magazine after she'd read it. (It was always rolled up, with a piece of string tied around it.) I don't even remember ever seeing my mom read it, but I'd pore over the fashion spreads and ads and articles about marital problems, women's health issues, and being a good hostess. (In the back there was even a column called "Ask a Sex Therapist"! Shh.)

I had forgotten about Chatelaine until I read this story about its new editor. But that rolled up magazine was often a big part of this Canadian girl's Sunday afternoons -- after eating toasted cheese sandwiches (with tomatoes in the summer and pickles in the winter) and listening to "Gilmour's Albums" on CBC.

I miss my sensible, no-frills mom. Hi Mom! See you in seven or eight weeks. xo

Slacker

Not only is it very humid at the moment, but it's rainy. Very tropical. Yucky.

I've done a row and a half of dots on PPD, and I'm having a bit of a Polka Purl Problem. It's not the pattern -- it's the knitter. When I switch from a purl stitch to a knit stitch, it's a smooth transition, but switching from knit to purl leaves slackness between the stitches. Since the top is worked back and forth (one flat piece), the slackness is always on the same side of the dot. Obviously blocking will be crucial to this garment to get the dots to lay flat; will my stitch slackness be solved by blocking? (The yarn is 60% cotton, 40% acrylic.)

I've read that working close to the end of the needles helps with this problem, and I'm doing that, but I'm still a slacker. I'd love it if anyone could give me some advice here.

Other than than, so far so good with PPD. I'm making one modification, and that's skipping the tie-around belt: partly because I'm not sure that I'll have enough yarn to knit the belt, but also because I'm afraid it would just hang down in the back. Why, oh why, didn't IK publish a shot of the back of PPD? There are two photos of the front, but since it's a wraparound, I think it's just as important to show the back. Grr. Instead of the belt, then, I think I'll put a button or two at the sides to hold it together. I won't have to worry about that until the end.

Has anyone finished a PPD? If so, I'd love to hear/see how it turned out.

You want me to cast on how many stitches?

I love having a day off in the middle of the week! Yesterday was a holiday in Taiwan (Dragonboat Festival), and I slept past noon. The luxury! The hedonism! The downright laziness! Then Billy and I spent the whole afternoon at Café 25 -- I read the paper, read some of my book, worked on my new knitting project, and--

Hey! Hold it right there, missy! What new knitting project is that?

Here's the deal: I'd decided not to start anything big until I'm settled in Canada, lest I find myself halfway through a sweater on moving day. Till then, socks. Fine, so I was right on track, finished the whole wheat lace and signed up for Six Sox. Then I had my whole My Hobby Is Important revelation, during which I decided that I wanted to try Cascade Fixation for my next socks. Period. Nothing else would be acceptable. And this would be fine, except... well, don't you hate it when you want to buy something that isn't available in, like, your country? Me too. So I ordered, and I must wait. In the meantime, I found myself in the knitting void, the abyss of No Projects On The Go. So I adjusted my earlier Nothing Big decision. It became the OK, But Nothing New initiative.

To make a short story even longer, I decided to use the leftovers from last year's RocKami: a black Japanese cotton/acrylic blend. First, I turned to Vintage Knits, only to find that most of the patterns set Large at a 36-inch bust. I don't have time for math at the moment, so I moved on. And I found it: a pattern with the right gauge that requires the right amount of yarn! My new knitting project is Polka Purl Dots, the sexy little wraparound top from Interweave Knits (spring 2004). I love Véronik's designs, and I've had my eye on this one since I first saw it. I'm an inch into it now, and an inch is no small feat when the cast-on edge is more than four feet long! It takes me fifteen minutes to knit a row. I was afraid the polka dots wouldn't show up in black, but there's a slight shimmer to the yarn (the acrylic part, I suppose), and I think the pattern will show up nicely -- probably not in photos, though. Boo.

I loved all the comments on the last post, about bookshelf (dis)organization, except they made me miss my books even more. I also love that new people commented. Hello! Apologies to all for Excessive Capitalization and Italics today -- I don't know what's come over me. Help! Whatever it is, somebody get it off!

Bookstores, books, and bookshelves

There's a big, fancy new bookstore in Taipei -- on the fourth floor of the city's big, fancy new building -- and I went on the weekend. I was hoping to pick up a knitting mag, but there were none to be found. "Well, what's so great about this bookstore?" thought I. "They don't even have knitting magazines! Harrumph!" So I began to wander and soon found myself in the Hobbies and Crafts section. Well, lo and behold! A whole shelf of knitting books, books whose titles I've read on blogs -- they're real! There was even a copy of Stitch 'n' Bitch; it was smaller than I'd expected, but thicker.* I didn't buy anything, though -- no more books for me before I leave, unless it's something I won't be able to find in Canada.

I'm thinking about books today, mostly about how out of touch I am with literature. Several people have posted the (highly debatable) list of 100 classic books and marked the titles they've read. (I won't do it. It wuddent maik mee look brainie.) The lovely and talented Ms. Cari has suggested her own top ten and begun to gather other suggestions in her comments. And I feel rather like a dummy, because I've hardly read during the past few years, and I can't even come up with ten fiction titles to recommend.

When Bill and I moved to Taiwan, we sold off many of our possessions and put the rest in storage, and since I made an inventory, I know I kept ten boxes of books. How I miss them! I don't even have a bookshelf here! I'm really, really looking forward to unpacking them all in September and organizing them on shelves -- once I have all our stuff shipped from B.C. to Ontario and find a place to live, that is. (Details, details.)

How do you organize your books? Alphabetically? Chronologically? Sentimentally? Colourifically?

* Oh, I hope I don't attract a zillion dirty-minded google searches with that.

Taipei is like a box of chocolates

Bill and I were on our scooter last night, stopped at a red light on Heping East Road, when I looked to my right and saw a man sitting on the curb holding a leash... with a big black rooster at the end of it. After thirty seconds or so, the man stood up and began to walk, tugging on the leash to get the rooster to move. Let me tell you, it wasn't easy. The bird was really not into being walked -- he kind of jerked forward and then stopped, stuck another leg out and stopped. Then the light changed, and we drove off.

Last month, on the day of President Chen's inauguration ceremony, I was walking down Chongching South Road near where I work, and I thought I saw a dog on a leash that was tied to a post on the sidewalk. But it wasn't a dog. It was a hairy little pig. On a leash. In the middle of the city. Tied to a post while its owner did some shopping or banking.

You just never know what'cher gonna get.

Friday!

I've come across a ton of good stuff for you to read, but it's Friday and I don't have the energy for much commentary. Get your coffee, click away, and talk amongst yourselves.

"Sept. 11 commission paints vivid picture of chaos and errors on fateful day": Sept. 11 commission found no connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, Bush has the nerve to dispute the commission's findings.

"A perfect storm of issue films": Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 9/11, anti-establishment documentaries, political popular culture.

"The fire within": Shirley Hazzard, The Great Fire, fabulous background, passion for the English language.

"Who's afraid of the 1950s?" Julia Stiles, smartypants, defends Mona Lisa Smile.

"Cutting remarks": Valerie Solanas, SCUM Manifesto revisited in a "sexy new edition," Sylvia Plath comparison.

"Giving party theme songs the 'Canadian Idol' treatment": Liberal, Conservative, and NDP original theme songs; nice quote on the Conservatives' tune:

"It's just terrible. It's like a terrible, bad song... And I'm sure they did all kinds of focus groups and all kinds of crap to figure out if it was any good, but the reality is it didn't move me. It's terrible. It's a terrible song."

"A new voting age for women: 26": Young American women don't vote.

"Publisher Jack McClelland dies at 81": "He made a career in publishing seem exciting, and possible."

"Conflicting schedules may keep Kiefer from Douglas bio-pic": Jack Bauer! Tommy Douglas?

"Baby's hand found on beach is from doll": Nothing gets past the experts in Toronto!

Have a great Friday.

Why do I knit?

I've been thinking about this since my recent confession about charity knitting. Knitting is really the first hobby I've had as an adult. I don't play an instrument (though I really do want to take piano lessons). I don't sail, build models, or restore furniture. I don't consider reading to be a hobby -- it's more like eating and sleeping. I make bits and pieces of art from time to time, but it's not my hobby. Ditto for sewing. Knitting is the first thing I've invested in, in all senses of the word. I do it almost every day, I look forward to doing it, and I enjoy myself while I'm doing it.

And clearly it's not just the act of knitting that I enjoy. Knitters talk about the relaxing quality of it as an activity, but (for me, anyway), it's not the actual knitting, the physical move-this-needle-through-this-stitch -- if that were it, I'd be happy to knit cat blankets till the cows came home. It's not even the finished product. To be honest, I haven't worn any hand-knit socks for real yet. (I call this the Good China Syndrome.) For me, it's the process. It's a combination of the technical knitting, the yarn, and the pattern. It's the fun of being in the middle of a great novel, compared to the tiny let-down of finishing one.

And as I begin to pack boxes to send back to Canada, and as I make decisions about what yarn to bring and what to leave behind, I'm making a bigger decision about my hobby. I'm deciding to make it important.

I'm thrifty. I'm not very good at spending money, and as a result, I tend to buy the thing that isn't quite what I want, because it's cheaper than the thing I really want. Then I end up with a bunch of cheap things that just aren't right. And that's a waste. I'm not doing that with knitting. I'm not talking about yarn guilt, either; I don't care how much you spend on yarn or how much yarn you hoard in your house. I'm talking about making my hobby a little bit sacred. At the end of the day, when I get home and have time to knit, I want to always be knitting something I really want with yarn that feels great.

Hmm. This is all sounding rather obvious, but it's a bit of an epiphany for me. See, it's not about the knitting. It's about how I value my time. As an editor, when I'm working, it doesn't occur to me not to use the best references I can get, and I'm going to show the same respect to myself in my spare time that I do at work. It's not about yarn snobbery; it's about believing that my time is worth nice yarn. Because I don't have to knit. But I choose to spend my time doing it, and my time is precious to me.

Whole wheat lace socks



I finished these socks this afternoon (I took a mental-health day -- wheee!), but not quite in time to photograph them in natural light. I'm really pleased with them. I knit them from the toe up, beginning with a square toe. The square toe and the lace pattern are taken from a free pattern called Lace Top, Toe Up Regia Color Sock. To see a close-up shot of the lace, click here. (It's not a dainty lace. It's... it's a burly lace.)

I also knit afterthought heels for the first time, and I think I'm in love. I used six decrease points in my heels (according to Dawn Brocco's instructions). They fit perfectly. I'm definitely going to use this technique again. Click here for a shot of my heel. The best part of the afterthought heel is that it comes at the end. These socks were great: first, boring stockinette foot; second, skip the heel and go on to fun lace; last, knit the heel, which, like the Retro Prep yoke, gets smaller and faster as you go. (I was inspired to try these by the Keyboard Biologist's photo essay of the process.)

These are the best-fitting socks I've knit for myself yet. In fact, my feet are doing a happy dance!

What's next? Well, socks, actually. I've joined the Six Sox Knitalong, so I'll be knitting a pair of cloverleaf lace socks -- but I'll use a colour a little less... crunchy.

And you? What are you working on?

Eat much?

Plums, pineapple, bananas, peaches, mango, green mango, lychees.

Sunfish (mola mola), snowfish jaw, tuna and salmon sashimi, salmon belly, prawns, clams, octopus, squid, various types of fish for which no English translation was available.

Bamboo shoots, mountain fern, asparagus, fish and miso soup, tofu, "rough rice."

Many iced lattes, much beer.

This is what I can remember eating this weekend, but there was even more. Bill and I went on a road trip with our friends J and C to Taichung (about three hours south of Taipei). Saturday was a beautiful, sunny, breezy, glorious day. We stopped at a big fish market (Wuchi) and then had a big seafood lunch. Then we stopped at Taichung Municipal Park (atop Dadu [Big Belly] Mountain -- how appropriate) to fly a kite. We went out for dinner with J's parents and ate a ton, followed at their house by a table full of fresh fruit (where I was heard many times to say, "OK, just one more piece, because I'm so full!"). The next day, J's mother made eight or nine dishes for lunch. Then the four of us rolled back home.

I took a lot of photos, and I'll put them up tonight. I hope you had a good weekend, too!

***

OK, the pictures are up! (Be warned: There are many shots of raw fish. And parts of raw fish.)

Little Mr. Tea Egg and my whole wheat lace socks

I'm, like, so TGIF right now

Canada cracks me up.* First of all, there is the fact that Ed Broadbent, the former leader of our federal socialist party, is in the race for MP of Ottawa Centre with the (wildly punctuated) slogan "Guess Who's Back!?!" Second, there's the spectacularly unhip (and poorly capitalized) headline in today's Ottawa Citizen: "The NDP gets all jiggy with it: yo, Homey, it's rappin' ed: the ndp you've never seen" (uh, was that supposed to rhyme?). Then there's the video clip of "rappin' ed," in which he wears boxing gloves and challenges Liberal leader Paul Martin to "fight like a man." Clearly, Ed Broadbent and William Shatner should sing duets and take their show on the road. Two crazy Canadian homeys, yo! (Ralph Nader's kicking himself right now because he didn't think of gettin' jiggy with it on video.)

Did you hear the one about the sheepdog with a two-hundred-word vocabulary? (No, I can't think of a punch line for that, but I think it would be something about George W. Bush being jealous.)

China reports that the number of giant pandas in the wild is up 40 percent since 1988. It's probably more likely that counting methods have changed. Pandas are notoriously bad at reproducing -- because, as everybody knows, all the good pandas are either married or gay.

I tried (not very hard, admittedly) to read Ulysses for a university English class ten years ago (in which I was in way over my head), and I'm thinking it might be time to give it another shot. See, I just read this story about the hundredth anniversary of the day the novel was set, which says thousands of people will celebrate by copying some of the things that happened in the story. My first thought was, Oh, so people are going to report in detail how much change they're carrying in their pockets and make a note of every time they pass gas? Fascinating! But according to the article, Ulysses is "a towering tribute to human warmth and kindness." (OK, obviously I didn't get that.)

Here's a long list of disconnected movie trivia: "Think you know your film facts?"

* Well, sometimes it makes me want to scream and tear out my hair, like when I read that Stephen Harper might actually be our next prime minister; if I ever find out you voted Conservative, well, that's a whole other story, but let's just say I won't be very happy with you.

Pssst!

Come closer -- I don't want to have to say this very loudly. I have a confession to make. [Looks around furtively, a bit like the shady salesman ("Wanna buy a letter S?") from Sesame Street.]

Don't tell anyone, but... I don't want to knit afghan squares and kitty blankets. My knitting time is limited, not to mention my knitting speed. Fact is, I want to spend my precious knitting time making wearable items. Preferably for myself. Knitting up my stash crap into a big square is really boring. There, I said it. I applaud all the charity knitters, but henceforth, this little needle-clacker won't have a square to spare. So there.

Now, quick! Be distracted from my selfish revelation by the following amusing links!

How can 2004 be the first year that a black woman has won a Tony award for Best Leading Actress?

Andrea Levy has won the Orange prize for fiction -- a "literary upset," it seems -- and one of the judges has written about what it was like to read dozens of novels in six weeks and choose the best one.

Young men don't read enough serious fiction, so Penguin has come up with the idea that young men will read books if they think it makes them look sexy to women. OK, whatever it takes, right? But look at this! Guys, you don't even need to read a book; according to the website, "You may not even need to read it, just bend the covers, let it stick out of your pocket and the book will do the talking!" And who's this woman? (Oops, I mean girl.) Well, she's the Good Booking Girl, and if she spots you reading the official book of the month, she'll give you a thousand quid. In fact, that scenario will no doubt look exactly like this (scroll down), you lucky fella. Is it just me, or is this totally insane?

It's been ages since I took a quiz:



You're a Dialogue/Character Writer!
What kind of writer are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Retro Prep redux

Thanks for all the compliments on my sweater! Really, I was so excited about it, and it's awesome to -- well, frankly, to hear people agree with me. Since I haven't gotten round to putting up the details in my knitting gallery, here you go:

Yarn: Noro Kureyon 100% wool (colour 131) -- 10 balls
Needles: 4mm (US 6 / Cdn. 8)
Gauge: approximately 5 sts./inch (I followed the instructions for a 38-inch bust and the sweater came out about 40 inches around.)

As well, I humbly accept the award of Best First Sweater Rockumentary, bestowed upon my last post by Greta.

This was certainly an easy sweater to start with.* It's knit in the round, so the only seaming left at the end is some underarm grafting (and I'm one of those perverted knitters who loves to graft). I enjoyed knitting from the bottom up; the body and sleeves involve an awful lot of stockinette, but once you attach them and start the yoke, each round goes faster and faster with the raglan decreases. I loved the Kureyon. It doesn't split, so you don't have to look at your work at all while you're knitting. (But you should, from time to time, as you may find that, say, six rows back you accidentally picked up the bar between two stitches and created a hole smack dab in the middle of the sweater front, damn it.) Changes in colour and thickness keep it interesting. The knitted fabric is thick, and no doubt it will be toasty warm, but I don't imagine I'll knit such a bulky sweater again. (I prefer to wear lighter ones.) Yes, it is a bit scratchy, but not nearly as much as I thought it would be. I always wear a T-shirt under a sweater anyway, so the itch factor doesn't matter too much. And of course there is the wonderful fact that no one else has this sweater in these colours.

* It's the first sweater I've finished, but it wasn't the first I started. The pieces of my Must Have Cardie are still waiting patiently to be seamed.

Why is this woman smiling?



Because she's wearing the first sweater she's ever knit and she loves it!

I finished my Retro Prep last week, but yesterday was the first day I could take pictures in natural light, and yes, the colours really are that bright (Noro Kureyon 131). The sweater has been Beatrix-approved; click here for a photo. It only seemed natural to model the sweater in a little pose I like to call "The Rachael": click here to see that. And because I love my readers -- and because my neighbours don't think foreigners are weird enough -- I didn't just fake a dance move for the sake of a photo. Oh, no. I freaking danced. Thank you, thank you very much.

Oh, and then I chased after Bea. Got her, too. Heh.

Thrustworthy

A girl's gotta have her standards, and I was quite intrigued to read this notice while riding in a taxi in Kuala Lumpur last weekend:



If you click on the picture, you can see the three measly photos of KL I put up on my Pictures page.

This afternoon, Bill and I are heading for the hills, for another hot-spring weekend. Oh, this life! I'm going to miss it, aren't I?

On June 4, 1989, I was a clueless sixteen-year-old finishing Grade 11. I vaguely remember seeing an image over and over on the news of a lone man standing in the path of a row of tanks in Beijing. I didn't understand it, and I certainly didn't know the extent of the violence that took place in and around Tiananmen Square that day. But now I do, and it was horrifying. Please take time today to remember the massacre of hundreds of unarmed people that occurred fifteen years ago, or to educate yourself a little bit about it. You'll feel sick reading about it, but that's because it was and continues to be sickening. Keep reading anyway.

"China police on alert on Tiananmen anniversary":

Late on Thursday, a lone man in his 50s staged a short-lived protest, kneeling to pray at the foot of the Monument to the People's Heroes at the center of the plaza. He was swiftly taken away by police...

"SARS doctor joins 'disappeared' on Tiananmen anniversary":

But at Beijing University few people were aware of today's anniversary. "Most young students don't know about Tiananmen because the media never raises the topic," a postgraduate said....

In the Xidan district of Beijing, where activists once put up posters on the "Democracy Wall", the land has been cleared for a Starbucks, several banks and a shopping centre.

Asked about the significance of June 4, one shopper guessed it might be Father's Day.

"Tiananmen bloodshed remembered":

The annual candlelit vigil in Hong Kong's Victoria Park will be the only event on Chinese soil to mark the 1989 massacre.... Protests had already begun on Thursday when students at Hong Kong University repainted a slogan on campus: "The flame of democracy will never be extinguished. The souls of the dead will live on."

"Provoking the tiger":

The conventional wisdom in Beijing (and too often among complacent Western diplomats and business people) is that most ordinary Chinese do not care what happened and that most dissidents have become entrepreneurs or research fellows abroad. Chinese officials parrot the formula that the crackdown was justified in dealing with a "political turmoil" that would otherwise have undermined the nation's "stability" and harmed the whole world.

If the Beijing Massacre is really so irrelevant today, why have the authorities reacted so nervously to the June 3/4 anniversary?

"Tiananmen Square, 15 years later":

Most days, the Avenue of Eternal Peace is jammed solid all the way to Tiananmen Square, but now and again it comes back to me: the rumbling tanks, the bodies on the overpass, the window-panes riddled with bullet-holes, the pall of smoke over the city....

Although 4 June and democracy remains the key issue in Hong Kong, in Beijing one could be forgiven for thinking it never happened. The government demanded a collective amnesia and seem to have achieved it. On the eve of the anniversary, I spent an evening with a senior Chinese journalist talking about press freedom; the issue never came up.

"15 years later, exiled Tiananmen protesters nurture hope for a new system":

The government defends the crackdown and continued one-party rule as a key to China's economic success. It rejects pleas to reverse its verdict that the protests were a counterrevolutionary riot.

The protests were "political turmoil no matter what you call it," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said this week. He defended the crackdown as playing "a very good role in stabilizing the situation, which enabled China to develop its economy and make contributions to the peace and development of the world."

"China: 15 years after Tiananmen, calls for justice continue and the arrests go on" (Amnesty International press release):

There has been no open inquiry into the deaths and arrests surrounding the demonstrations. Amnesty International has records of more than 50 people it believes are still imprisoned for their part in the protests. This number is a fraction of the true figure, which has never been released by the authorities.

I want it all

I want to knit smarter and faster. I also want to do all the prep work that Jenna advises in her fabulous Knitty article, I really do. It just makes so much sense! But then there are the freshly wound balls of yarn that taunt and beckon and make it well-nigh impossible to ignore them for the time it takes to read through a whole pattern, let alone indicate decreases on one's enlarged schematic! I don't think I'm strong enough.

As I was pulling on my (store-bought) socks this morning, I was thinking that it would be funny to write a short story about a knitting blogger who feels so much pressure to attract readers and keep up with the other, speedy knitters that she fakes her FOs. At first, she is hesitant; she scans a stitch-detail photo from an old, obscure knitting book and posts it on her blog, casually claiming it as a swatch of her own. As she gets more comments from unsuspecting readers, she gets bolder; eventually, she's photographing socks and sweaters she's bought and pretending that she's knit them. I don't know how the story would end, though. Would she be outed and ousted, like Jayson Blair from the NY Times (who is now on a book tour promoting his memoirs of news-faking)? Would the whole knitblogging ring implode under the weight of scandal? Perhaps knitters from around the ring would stand by her, admitting that they too have felt the pressure, even been tempted to exaggerate about their own accomplishments on the needles. Or maybe she'd just walk away and vanish from the ring without a trace. She'd donate her computer to a local high school, and knit contentedly on her back porch, rarely finishing the second sock of a pair and caring not a whit.

What do you think would happen?

Bright Lights, Link City

Our computer went kaplooey again. Hopefully it'll be back soon (meaning there will be photos on this here blog). Stupid computers.

It's impossible to keep up with all the articles in which journalists discover Cool/Not-yer-Granny Knitting, not that anyone wants to read them all, but I link this one because it's from Vancouver: "Knitting is hot!"

There were a few extra-great articles in the Guardian yesterday, thanks to the writers' festival taking place in Hay-on-Wye, Wales. (What's a Wye?) The best so far have been "On the rack," wherein the Guardian challenges a series of writers to a two-day game of Scrabble; and "Hay dudes," which addresses the tendency among literary folk to dress like members of a "Dandy Mafia." Oh, to write such excellent descriptions of such rich material! One novelist sports "the handkerchief equivalent of an indulgently rolled R"; an outdoorsy broadcaster has "skin the colour of a Werther's Original."

David Beckham is going to be on the cover of Vanity Fair. Will you recognize him?

B Ruby Rich argues for lezbionic cinema. (Damn it, I thought I'd invented that word a couple of weeks ago.)

"Islam's marked woman": Irshad Manji is one tough, brave, smart, and sassy woman.

"Schoolgirl kills classmate": The headline didn't surprise me -- North Americans love to hear about violent kids, after all, especially girls -- but I was surprised to read that this happened in Japan. I suppose the story challenges some of the stereotypes I hold about Japan -- studious, well-behaved children; submissive girls.

Rachael has started running, which I admire. I would start running, too -- if I was chasing a 32-kilo wheel of cheese.

It's a Trivial Pursuit question, but it doesn't seem to be true. Can China's Great Wall be seen from space with the naked eye? In any case, China has more pressing things to worry about, with next year's Britney Spears tour.

Be happy that you (probably) live in a space larger than three to six square meters, unlike residents of Vietnam's big cities. (Do click on the little photos to see them bigger -- it looks like Taipei, but colourful instead of grey.)

How can it be June already? Why does Beatrix want to chew on the toilet brush? Am I the only one who finds the "cartoon" characters in Shrek really freaky? Why won't Kiefer return my calls? These are just some of the questions that eat away at my mind.