I'm back

These one-and-a-half-day holidays are really not cutting it. It's always good to get away, and given the choice, I'll always choose to get on a plane and spend the weekend somewhere else. Still, it's pretty quick, and it means there's not much you can do when -- for example -- you are only in Kuala Lumpur for one full day, and that day includes a five-hour afternoon thunderstorm and an allergy attack that lasts from morning till night.

Mostly we slept and ate. Fortunately, these are two of my favourite things. We had the best meal in recent memory on Friday night at a Lebanese restaurant: falafel, tabouleh, hummus, baba ghanouj, labneh, pita bread. That dinner was worth the price of the flight. We did have a great view of the twin towers from our hotel room; I'll put up some photos tonight.

I did quite a bit of sock-knitting, too, mostly on the plane. I'm making a pair of toe-up socks for myself with Patons Kroy yarn, in "flax," which is a gray-brown. People who are knitting bright colours for summer can join the candy-along; me, I'm knitting porridge. I'm knitting whole wheat bread. It's visual relief from my Retro Prep. (Yes, it is finished, thank you for asking! Photos soon.)

Not only did Beatrix get her stitches out and cone off last week, but she's clearly no worse for wear. On Thursday, Billy and I were awakened at six in the morning by a series of thumps and strange noises in our bedroom. Any guesses? Bea the Cockroach Queen had brought a live bird into the house and released it in our bedroom. So the bird was flying around the room, and Bea was running around on the bed. I grabbed the cat and basically had to sit on her while Bill went after the bird and corralled it down the hall and out the front door, at which point it flew away. I think all four of us -- Bill and I, Bea, and the bird -- were equally surprised by this whole event. (Come to think of it, any neighbours awake at that hour must've been surprised as well, at the sight of a naked white man chasing a bird out of an apartment.)

Instant Messenger Office Theatre
starring Alison and her coworker Danny

alison: Help me finish a sentence? "We ate typical Chinese food: noodles, dumplings, ???, and so on."
danny: McDonalds.
alison: Stop it.
danny: Tofu.
alison: Xie xie.
danny: Good thing that having been immersed in a Chinese culture for years you've been able to learn two of the local dishes. You should be an anthropologist.

Socks across the Pacific

I made these socks for my friend Allison last Christmas. She sent me this awesome photo and e-mail yesterday:

The socks are overlooking the Pacific Ocean, with the coast of northern California way in the distance. I'm on the deck of our stateroom on the Island Princess. I specifically packed those socks just so I could take that picture, though they came in handy sitting on that deck in the early morning, trying to spot whales. (All I managed to see in the water, besides driftwood, was a shoe.) The socks also came in handy stuffed around the laptop I borrowed for the trip. Mom says your socks are made better than the ones my granny makes, because yours have a proper heel. This is a very high compliment!

Hand-knitting lives and rocks on both sides of the ocean, my friends. Thanks, 2L!

I just discovered I can have titles.

Bush abuses name of prison

Two rehearsals for his prime-time speech on Monday were not enough to keep US President George W. Bush from mangling the name of the Abu Ghraib prison that brought shame to the US mission in Iraq. Bush mispronounced Abu Ghraib each of the three times he mentioned it while announcing plans to tear down the infamous jail. The prison is usually pronounced by English speakers as "abu-grabe." But Bush, long known for verbal and grammatical lapses, stumbled on the first try, calling it "abugah-rayp." The second version came out "abu-garon," the third sounded like "abu-garah." White House aides said Bush practiced twice on Monday before leaving for the venue at the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

(from the Taipei Times' World Quick Take)

The great thing about a bottom-up raglan is that the knitting speeds up as you finish. After all the stockinette of the sleeves and body, round and round and round, you get to the yoke and start to decrease -- and zoom! Suddenly, you're almost done. I'm at the point now where I could bind off and wear this sweater to try-outs for a revival of Flashdance.

I'm going to Malaysia this weekend! Bill has to go to KL, so I'm going along, too -- just from Friday to Sunday. I wasn't going to go, but I've never been, and this jet-setting-around-Asia thing isn't going to last much longer. So I changed my mind; I said to Bill, "OK, I'll go because it's another big city to cross off my list, and it's not too-too expensive, and it's OK to take one day off work once in a while, and we haven't been away together for six months." (And then Bill, who has heard me try to justify spending my money a thousand times, rolled his eyes and said, "Go because there's a bar in the hotel pool.")

Double-double

The second edition of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary -- with five thousand new words and word senses -- is set to be published this summer. (Here's an article.) I have a feeling that non-Canadians may be surprised to learn that there is indeed such a thing as Canadian English (besides "eh" and "hoser").

Barber [the dictionary's editor-in-chief] maintains that her favourite word discovery occurred during the work for the first edition, when she determined that "shit disturber" was, in fact, a specifically Canadian term (Americans apparently prefer "shit stirrer").

Who knew? It's not just the words themselves, either, but their definitions. "Marriage," for example, has been revised; in its definition, the previous reference to "a man and a woman" has been changed to "two people."

A picture of Sandra Schmirler should accompany the "sweep hard" definition of "hurry," don't you think? No one bellowed "Hurry! Hurry! Haaarrrrrd!" like she did. (Bill and I got totally swept up in the 1998 Olympic curling coverage.)

Look! Beatrix is a trendsetter! Ha. (She's going to the vet tonight, hopefully to get her stitches out and her cone off.)

Nice tattoos, but the corset! Ooch! (I think the photo is from the Long Beach pride parade.)

Here's a little optimism for you: "Bush can't win this election now. Kerry can only lose it."

I need to talk about my hair just a little more.

You realize that we in the West lie (if we have to) about haircuts and outfits and such, right? We automatically rave, "It looks great!" almost no matter what. And damn it, I like it.

I may have mentioned the brutal honesty of the Taiwanese at some point. See, the myth is that Westerners are forward and direct, while the Chinese are all about saving face. This is true in some ways, but sometimes it's the opposite, depending on the subject of the comment. For example, I've had Taiwanese acquaintances tell me matter-of-factly that I look tired, that I have bags under my eyes, that I'm fat, and that I appear to be pregnant. (Not all at the same time, thankfully.)

I walked into my office this morning, which I share with four women. They all gasped and smiled, two exclaimed "Your hair!" and then there was a beat of silence. Then one said, "Short!" and then they all carried on working. Hello? I want fawning! I'm used to "It looks great!" (Cue fabulous comments from blog readers, whom I adore.)

I was talking to my parents on the weekend, and when I told my dad I'd had my hair cut, he asked a very sensible question: "How did you do that?" Well, I went to a salon that I'd spotted a few weeks ago, which looked to me from the outside to be the right kind of place. I walked in and handed a print-out of a photo to the woman at the counter and said, in Chinese, "I want that." Then, just to be sure, I made scissor motions with one hand at shoulder level. She got it. But it really could've gone either way.

I'm beglamouring you with my tales of living abroad, aren't I? Here's another one: To buy garbage bags last night, I had to resort to singing the garbage-truck version of Für Elise to the check-out clerk: doo-do-doo-do-doo-do-doo-do-do...

In case you feel nostalgic about the senior prom (does anyone? yikes), read this and recall the nightmare: "The foul formal frock fest."

Holy crap, Michael Moore's film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes!

(This link is for Maggi, and anyone else for whom my pop-up images fail to pop.)

Six inches

That's how much hair I had cut off today. Finally, I've bobbed! Click here to see the before shot -- it's not the greatest shot, since I'm wearing black. Ready? OK, click here to see the new me! I'm really pleased with this haircut.

Bea is doing really well, but she has to keep her Elizabethan Collar on until next Tuesday. I tell her she looks cool:



Have a great weekend!

Happy Friday

There's lots to read today. Shall we begin with the most disturbing news? No, I'm not talking about the latest photos from Abu Ghraib that show cheerful soldiers posing with Iraqi corpses. I'm talking about reports that Ice-T is planning to produce a rap album by David Hasselhoff. Oops, I hope you haven't just eaten. This has to be a practical joke, doesn't it? Ice T is quoted as saying,

"He's gonna come out as Hassle The Hoff -- I promise you. The Hoff will surprise people with his rap skills and humour."

Um, sure. Wait, don't start eating again yet. Rupert Everett has come out of the closet again, this time as a dumb-ass. Seems that he "reckons he's gay because he wasn't breast-fed as a baby."

"Theft spree made the bride's big day": the photo is even better than the story. This woman stole her wedding dress, a stereo, and seventeen tumbler cups for her big day; the man she married has left; yet she has the chutzpah to give a big thumbs-up to the camera, bless her.

The Guardian's "Sidelines" covers bigots, the Pope, Apple Paltrow-Martin, and Posh Spice's hair. Another story in the Guardian ("Skeletons in the closet") is about the Order of Skull and Bones, an exclusive Yale club -- "a strange hybrid of debating society, group therapy and Epicurean club" -- that both Dubya and John Kerry belonged to as students.

"Chinese films in Cannes Film Festival": Of the eighteen films on the shortlist for the Palme d'Or prize at Cannes, six are Asian. Gong Li is also set to receive a special acting award. The article includes a list of award-winning Chinese and Taiwanese films from past Cannes festivals, which is great if you're at a loss for titles to rent this weekend.

The current Time magazine has a feature on retro style: "How retro can you go?"

Even a sophomoric reversion might be understandable at the moment, given that the past looks so much better than the future. But these backward glances aren't mere escapism. They help to ground us, to sort through the clutter that surrounds us -- and they're there when we need to be reassured that technology can never replace human beings.

There are photos to look at, too. How much do I want this mixer and toaster? Not now, of course, since I have nowhere to put them -- I already have a toaster oven and a blender on my kitchen floor and a refrigerator in my hallway.

Still with me, knitters? There's a feature in the Christian Science Monitor today on our fine and trendy craft: "A ball of yarn, two needles, and a latte."

Have a great Friday.

Blah

I have nothing to say, really. I find the state of the world distressing, but I don't feel like writing about politics. Because you can't just write a little, and I don't have the energy to get into it properly.

Today was President Chen's inauguration, and as far as I can tell, it was free of incident. (On our lunch break, Danny and I walked down to where it had been held, and to get our hands on free "Love Taiwan!" hats we nearly came to blows with a horde of Taiwanese grannies. They are tough, and they have pointy little elbows.)

It's dark and pouring rain outside, which contributes to my Blah. And you know the feeling when you're just really, really not able to focus on your work? Hi, that's me. This is why I prefer freelancing. I could go and do something else, and come back to the work when I'm actually able to concentrate. Blah.

It does make me happy, though, that there are people pursuing and making a living at what they love, and that some people really, really love fonts: "A bold type of guy."

How much longer till I can go home and knit?

. . .

A little later... OK, my workmate Danny has cheered me up by pointing me to this link:

Right now, bastards are plotting to draw smiley faces on a dyslexic tripod. My gravestone and cake are laughing, and suspenders that I work with may be bulbous.

I'm Federal Agent Jack Bauer, and this is the most cordless kaleidoscope of my life.

I ended up using a cable cast-on for the body of Retro Prep, and I'm really happy with how it looks. And I just can't stress enough how much I can't believe I chose these colours! :)

Knit it or move it

I stayed home with Bea yesterday, so I got quite a bit of knitting done on my Retro Prep. I've finished the body up to where the sleeves attach; no attaching yet, though, since I've only knit one sleeve. One more sleeve, then, and then I'll be knitting the yoke and nearly done. I'm going to finish a sweater! And then I think I'll start a sock. I'm dying to knit a sock. I love the Kureyon, but I do love to knit with thin yarn on teeny needles.

I forgot to tell you that I bought yarn on impulse last Friday: ten 50-gram balls of a sport-weight cashmere-merino blend. In hot pink. I've never made such a big purchase with no clear plans for the yarn, but it was a good deal, and I figure there will be a hundred sweater options out there for it. Because I will absolutely need a soft, warm, hot-pink sweater to get through the upcoming Canadian winter, don't you think? Watch for this yarn to make an appearance here on the blog this fall as a work in progress...

The other day, I pulled my two big plastic bins of yarn out and organized their contents. Obviously, I'm only going to move the good stuff back to Canada with me. I set aside bits to use in kitty blankies and/or afghan squares (e.g., half a ball of Denimstyle, the Patons Canadiana that I started a raglan with but came to hate). Having very little space here -- plus the knit-it-or-move-it reality of living abroad temporarily -- has kept my stash to a minimum. All I'll be taking back with me is my modest sock yarn stash (five pairs' worth?), my new pink purchase, and a few other miscellaneous balls of worthwhile wool. Everything else will have to be knit up for charity, since I can't stand to throw out perfectly good yarn and will have guilty nightmares if forced to do so.

But, oh! When I am back and settled into an apartment that has modern conveniences like closets! Then I'm going to buy yarn. And knitting books. And knitting magazines. And a ball winder. And more yarn. I'm positively swimmy at the thought of it!

Bea is improving. The incision on her belly looks OK. She's adjusting to her Elizabethan Collar (thanks, Paula -- that's so much more dignified than cone). The saddest part is that she has no idea it's only temporary. As far as she knows, she was knocked out on Monday and woke up with this crazy plastic impediment around her head, and now that's how it is. As far as she knows, she'll never bathe or see her feet again! Poor little minx.

News flash! Presidential candidate's thirty-year-old daughter has breasts!

Briefly

Bea is doing fine, thank you for asking. But is there anything sadder than a cone on your pet's head? She's supposed to wear it for a week! A few minutes ago, I swear she said, "Don't look at me! I'm horrible!" (rolling the rr in a very dramatic way). She'll be OK, though.

I put some photos from my weekend trip up on my pictures page. Enjoy!

Sleepy

I had a fabulous weekend! We went to a tourist town in the mountains called Wulai and spent last night in one of the most awesome hotel rooms I've ever stayed in. There was a lovely big wooden jacuzzi in the room that filled with hot-spring water, right next to a wall of windows that looked out over a river to lush mountains. It was wonderful. I'll show you some pictures in a couple of days, since I'm very sleepy now.

I'm taking Bea in to be spayed tomorrow morning. Wish her luck!

Oui, c'est vrai!



Thanks, Vanessa! (No, it's not your eyes -- the image is wonky. The button just refused to be photographed, so I worked a bit of Photoshop magic. You get the idea.)

Knitting and movies and girls and smoking

I've now finished knitting two skeins' worth of the body of my Retro Prep, which brings me to the "waist" (i.e., I've done the decreases for waist shaping; with the next skein, I'll increase back up). I find the Kureyon to be so easy to knit -- because it's unsplittable, I guess. I don't have to look down at my knitting at all.

I worked on a kitty blanket the other night while watching Thirteen. What a sad movie about a sad girl. I liked it, though, and I thought the performances were good. Evan Rachel Wood reminded me a lot of Renée Humphrey in Fun. If you're into such films (the messed-up girl genre), as I am, you should also watch All Over Me.

I hate the fact that U.S. senators are pressuring Hollywood to keep cigarette smoking out of the movies:

"We want producers, directors to think before they just instinctively put a cigarette in an actor's hand, 'What effect is that going to have on children?'" [Republican John Ensign] said. "'Do I want to be responsible for addicting a kid?'"

Are Hollywood movies meant to be public service announcements? Apparently there are studies showing a link between kids watching movies that depict smoking, and kids starting to smoke. A causal link? Well, who knows? Don't ask such picky questions! But -- perhaps kids whose parents smoke are allowed to watch more movies than kids whose parents don't smoke. Perhaps there's a link between eating movie popcorn and smoking! I just hate that we tend to go the route of "protecting" kids rather than teaching media literacy and giving them tools with which they can deconstruct what they see.

Oh, I'm all worked up now. And it's time for lunch -- woot!

A few hours later: EEAAAGH! I just read an article that makes me want to stay far, far away from North America: "Fox puts foot in its mouth, kicks self." Is this a joke?

Fox issued a stunning news release yesterday for a two-hour reality special to air in June called "Seriously, Dude, I'm Gay" in which, the network said, two heterosexual men will try to convince various people that they are gay. In the news release, Fox described the notion of a straight man "turning gay overnight" as "a heterosexual male's worst nightmare."

I'm not easily shocked, but this concept shocks me. Please, please let this be a sign of the coming end of "reality TV"; if not, I fear that it's a sign of the apocalypse.

Linky

A May 11 press release titled "Blogging has arrived: Online diaries gain popularity and importance" singles out only two personal blogs (besides Howard Dean's), and one is Wendy Knits:

Not all blogs however are serious in nature. In fact, some of the most popular blogs can be funny and compelling reflections of their writer's personal hobbies or obsessions, for example, a blog by and about a fanatical knitter.

Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian, will be sworn in on May 20, and to celebrate, the tobacco and liquor branch has come out with... five kinds of inauguration liquor! Yeehaw! This just wouldn't happen in Canada or the U.S., would it? Bottles of booze with little photos of Paul Martin or John Kerry on them? Sadly, the governor of California will not be among the dignitaries in attendance on May 20. It would have been entertaining to watch him on the local news, since it takes about fifteen syllables to say "Schwarzenegger" in Chinese.

"Actor Kiefer Sutherland files for divorce." Two words, Kiefer: Call me.

Squaresville



My lovely assistant Miss Beatrix and I are pleased to present half a dozen eight-inch afghan squares, knitted as part of the Afghan-along going on over at Mason-Dixon Knitting. Now I'm pulling out all my odd bits of yarn so I can whip up a pet blankie or two for the Critter Knitter Knitathon. My goal is to use up all the yarn that I won't be moving back to Canada with me, and this is the perfect project for it (especially because kitties don't mind if a blankie is ugly, as long as it's snuggly).

So damn unbrainy

I spent the weekend knitting a Möbius strip. And you?

We've all read it: "Join, being careful not to twist." It's something like including "Turn the page now" at the bottom of each leaf in a novel, right? Duh, in other words. Well, never again will I mock the utter obviousness of this instruction. In fact, I propose that stronger language be used: "Join, being really, really careful not to twist. Now check it. Check it again. You may not move on until you check it again. Seriously. After two rows of pattern stitch, check it again, Mortal!"

To be exact, I knit a 200-stitch Noro Kureyon Möbius strip in k3p1 ribbing -- for two inches. That's right. Much to my horror, the body of the Retro Rip had become a Retro Strip. I may or may not have shrieked, "Noro, why hast thou forsaken me?" (denial being the first stage of grief). Then I ripped back and fixed it. Grr. But I'm back on track now. I'm one skein into the body. (I expect it'll take four more to get up to the point where the sleeves are attached.) I will finish this sweater by the end of May, and it will fit!

Thanks for all the compliments on the colourway I'm using, by the way. I'm still a bit shocked by the bright colours, and I can't imagine I'd ever buy a sweater in a similar Sunset-on-Acid palette, but I think I'll wear it a lot. I'm one of those "Buy neutral, knit colour" knitters.

Yarn stall on Chung-ching South Road



My yarn guy politely declined to pose for a photograph yesterday, but he did let me take a picture of his set-up. (You can see that he vacated his chair.) Because this is a downtown sidewalk, it was impossible for me to back up enough to capture much of the context (plus he always has two garbage bags filled with two-dollar balls of wool off to the left). It took a while just to get a break in pedestrian traffic so I could take the picture.

I'll miss passing the yarn guy every day. We always smile at each other. We have an understanding, the elderly yarn guy and I.

Please sleeve me

Retro Rip

All that stripey goodness is gone, for now. I started a sleeve last night, but didn't have much time to work on it. Hopefully this weekend I can make up for some lost (wasted) time on this sweater. Part of the reason I was willing to rip out all that knitting was that I wasn't happy with the cast-on edge anyway. Because of the extreme variation in thickness of the Kureyon, the cast-on edge looked lumpy and sloppy to me. I'd done a long-tail cast on, which is my default method for everything, but I think I'll try a plain old knitted (two needle) cast on this time to avoid the extra bulk. Does anyone have any cast-on advice for a ribbed Kureyon edge? (I did a long-tail cast on for the sleeve I started last night, because the length of yarn I needed was uniformly thin, and it was only forty stitches.)

Every now and then a gem appears on TV here, amidst endless reruns of Nicolas Cage action movies. On Tuesday night I watched Hysterical Blindness (directed by Mira Nair). The plot was pretty thin, but the performances were compelling. Compelling like a train wreck, in a way; I squirmed at the resemblance of the main characters to many girls I remember from high school. There was humour, but the film didn't belittle the characters. ("Belittle? Oh, big word, Deb!" shouts Juliette Lewis's character, Beth.) Much of it was grim, and parts were tough to watch. Your response to the film would probably depend at least a bit on how well you remember the gigantic aerosol hairspray cans and skintight acid-wash jeans of the 1980s, and whether you have an emotional reaction to the names Pat Benatar and Patrick Swayze. (This HBO movie might be old news to you; I see it was released in 2002.)

I bought a particular kind of juice at lunchtime yesterday just because it seemed to me that the Chinese characters on the box were "lady juice." I was right! Three characters: woman, vegetable, fruit juice. The same company already makes a vegetable-fruit juice, and no doubt the contents of the regular juice and the lady juice are the same. Anyway, I didn't like the lady juice. Today I bought kumquat-lime juice -- yum.

Doofus

See the Retro Prep progress photo I posted yesterday? OK, well, forget that. I'm going to rip it and redo it, because it's too small. It needs to be at least two inches wider all around, and while I know I could probably just block it bigger, I'd rather reknit it to fit. This has been a tough decision, as I never rip. Never. Unless there is some horrible knitted disfigurement going on, I just keep going. So deciding to rip three full skeins' worth of stitches is a bit extreme. But actually, it's only a week's worth of knitting, and dude, this yarn wasn't cheap. I want a sweater I'm going to love to wear. So you can expect to see a very similar progress photo in about a week, I hope, and then I'll be back on track. Look at me! I'm growing as a knitter! And it hurts a little bit. (And no, actually, I don't want to talk about how I managed to knit twelve inches of the body before realizing it was too small.)

My friend Steve is famous for being clever! Who wouldn't want that?

Here's a follow-up to the column by John Doyle I referred to on April 30: "Bill O'Reilly denies anger at Canada: Takes exception to ultra-right label."

[O'Reilly] says one thing would settle all arguments he's had with the [Globe]'s TV critic and that is if Canadians could only see Fox News and judge for themselves that it is not rabidly right wing, as has been suggested. ...

"If you had us up there to balance CNN, you'd give people a choice, they'd hear other points of view. Not conservative points of view -- this is not a conservative network."

I've never seen Fox News, but the fact that O'Reilly perceives CNN as somehow lefty or liberal makes me pretty suspicious of it.

Related: Al Gore has bought Newsworld "to create an independent source of information." We'll see.

Knitting is Sexy



I'm not sure I can say the same about myself, but I do get bonus points for the boa, don't I? (Here's where I bought my [X-large] T-shirt.)

Here's the story so far on my Retro Prep -- the colours look terrible in this photo, weird saturation or something, but I can't seem to improve it:



You'll just have to trust me. It looks much better than that. So much better, in fact, that I'm going to go and knit a few rows right now!

As if I didn't have enough on my plate, what with moving to a different hemisphere in three months and starting grad school a few weeks later, now I have to learn to crochet! First, all kinds of purty flower pins started popping up around the Internet; I resisted. Then, crocheted cupcakes; somehow, I resisted. But now, the adorable crochet me has put up a pattern for a sushi TP-roll cover.* I'm only human!

* The pattern suggests black yarn for the sides, but all the nori I've ever had is green. Is it usually black in Japan? What's up with this? I think green would look nicer.

Finally

Here it is: the feather and fan scarf, modelled by moi.



I'm standing in the sun in that shot (on our rooftop), and the colours are true. Click on the photo to see a shady shot, which better shows the lace pattern. I'm really pleased with this scarf (shawl?). It has a lovely drapey quality. Thanks, Wendy, for sharing the free pattern. (There is yet another shot of the scarf in my knitting gallery.)

As you can see, I haven't had my hair cut yet. I want to, but I keep putting it off. The truth is, I'm picky, and I'm afraid someone will cut it badly. (This is the lasting curse of hairdressing school.) Soon, though! It's just hair, right?