The Stars are God's Daisy Chain . . .

More beer

2011-06-27T15:31:51Z

Black Hart Irish-Style Dry Stout - found at Trader Joe's. I've put off noting this one down because I wanted to make sure I was writing about this beer, and not how I wished it was a Stockyard.
It's more bitter and subtle than Stockyard. It's more of a black coffee and bitter-sweet chocolate note that doesn't draw attention to itself, with a burnt toast flavor pervading the whole. I do like it, but it took me a couple of them (on different days) to appreciate it on its own merits. (I'm new at this this.)

Beers I like, and that will slip my mind if I forget to note them down

2011-06-16T15:43:25Z

Stockyard Oatmeal Stout - found at Trader Joe's. It has flavors of chocolate, coffee, and the caramelized flavor of toasted oats. Very dark and not highly carbonated.
I like to sip one of an evening instead of dessert. One beer has a lot less calories than a slice of cake, for example, and it doesn't interfere with your lace knitting if you sip to enjoy, as well as being far less sticky and having no crumbs. :D

Moylan's Kilt Lifter - found at their brewery/restaurant in Novato, CA, and also at BevMo. Rich and flavorful scotch ale, red and tasty. I like it with food or on its own to enjoy. I need to get another six of these . . . it's been a while. :D

Smithwick's - found at Trader Joe's and BevMo. An Irish red. It's not bad in itself, but it makes me think how I'd rather have a Moylan's Kilt Lifter.

Yay . . . otters? :D

2010-12-21T18:06:40Z

A rescued baby hummingbird

2010-10-29T16:18:27Z

Sushi Fishy!

2010-08-17T21:51:31Z

I made a fishy!

. . . that turns into a sushi!

He's all hand-spun, and mostly hand-dyed, as well. :D

Zombie Targhee redux

2010-06-14T19:53:05Z

Last fall, I dyed this stuff. I was never super happy with it . It was supposed to be a soft pea-green, rather than something resembling decomposing zombie entrails. It was too fine to get rid of in a quick-and-dirty type knitting project and too pale and beige-y to interest me in trying.

"

Last week, I finally reskeined it and put it back in the dyepot:

Much better! It's still not the color I was looking for, but it's something I can live with. I dyed it in the hot-pour method with green Kool-Aid, then added some Wilton's blue, red and neon green for interest.

I'm thinking fingerless mitts . . . .

Fuzzy chicken!

2010-05-17T22:50:05Z

I made a chicken for donnavieve .

Some vague notes in case I (or you, if you’re so inclined) want to make another one. Daughter wants another one, for instance.

Yarn and notions:

Bernat boucle-something, 1 melon-sized skein in soft white

Lion Brand fun fur in Lava

five size 8 bamboo dpns

Lion Brand Microspun in orange

a lot of size 2 dpns

Caron Simply Soft in red

size H crochet hook

buttons for eyes

NOTE: Leave long tails in places where they will be useful for sewing on/making up later.

Body:

With yarn held double, CO 40 stitches on four size 8 dpns. Realize that acrylic boucle yarn may be of diabolical origin since you can’t crochet it without threat of madness, and holding it singly makes too open a fabric whether knit or crochet. :P

Knit in round for about 5 inches. Decrease four stitches, for next three rows, twelve stitches total, to form shoulders. 28 stitches left on needles. Knit another 3 inches for neck/head. Decrease four stitches per row until four stitches remain. Cut yarn, pass end through stitches and draw closed.

Beak:

CO 18 in Microspun on size 2 dpns. Decrease every other row. Cut yarn and pass through last 3 stitches. If you turn it inside out, the decreases don’t show. At all. Stuff and sew to head.

Comb:

Chain about 14. Turn and single crochet for two rows. Turn and *sc 1, dc 3 in 1 stitch, sc 1* to form waves for comb. Sew on head.

Wattles:

Chain 3. Hdc 1, chain some, make another hdc. Fold in half and sew under beak.

Eyes:

Try to sew buttons on without making the chicken wall-eyed.

Wings (make 2):

CO 7 with boucle yarn held double. Knit flat in stockinette for 4 rows. Knit 2 row with 2 boucle and 1 fun fur. Knit remaining rows with 1 boucle and two fun fur. Decrease 2 stitches (beginning and end of row) on RS rows until 1 stitch remains. BO. Sew on to body.

Tail:

CO 10 with 2 fun fur and one boucle. Decrease 2 stitches (beginning and end of row) on RS, purl wrong side.

Change to 2 boucle, 1 fun fur. Decrease 2 stitches (beginning and end of row) on RS, purl wrong side.

Change to 2 boucle. Knit in stockinette for four rows. BO. Sew to body.

Feet (make 2):

CO 6 in Microspun using Emily Ocker’s circular cast-on. Increase over several rows to 21. Add more dpns to a group of 7 to knit stitches in round for first toe. Knit for an inch, cut yarn and pass through stitches. Join yarn to knit next 7 and last 7 stitches to knit toes in a similar manner.

Be sure to arrange stitches so that toes are in a row, not in a tripod. Sew to body.

Bottom:

CO 40 with 2 boucle. Join to knit in round and decrease four stitches every row until four stitches remain. Pass yarn through.

Stuff body. Sew bottom on.

Squeeze. :)

Daughter wants one now, of course.

Kittens on a slide!

2010-05-12T18:09:12Z

What I learned today

2010-05-12T16:41:39Z

This is what I learned today from a friend in corrections, as it was boasted to him from an inmate who was busted for it.

1. Never give your address to a travel agency. Guess who now knows you'll be gone from your house and precisely how long?

2. Never give your address to a jeweler. And pay in cash. Guess who now knows where an expensive bauble is to be found, and who knows how many other goodies? The guy doing the boasting had *five* jewelry store flunkies in pay to call him up whenever someone bought something good.

D:

Look! I finally completed a sweater!

2010-05-04T23:47:08Z

A baby sweater, that is. A friend's shower is this Friday.

I'm pleased with how the stripes mostly match up even though the sweater is pieced, rather than knit in the round.

I have learned:

1. That Sockotta is much better for an easy-care baby sweater than for socks. (It's pretty much 50/50 wool/cotton so it's thick for a sock yarn and not sproingy enough.)

2. Do NOT use snaps on a knitted garment. The knitting resents it mightily. Use real buttons or hooks-and-eyes instead.

I like this alot.

2010-04-15T22:08:43Z

I want an alot.

Writer's Block: Talk to the animals

2010-04-12T16:19:29Z

*is confused* Well, of course they talk! They're just not into pop culture or philosophy. But if you want to talk about sharing your food or snuggling, they're all over that.

For kalquessa . . .

2010-03-05T23:41:28Z

. . . a Star Wars version of "Goodnight Moon".

It's a PDF with some assembly required, but you like doing fancy stuff with paper, right?

From floof to sock

2010-03-04T19:02:58Z

I've been working with this on and off, but I am finally nearing completion!

We start with some colorful sheep floof:

This was spun into teeny-tiny singles and plied to create a true three-ply yarn. See the the dime? This stuff is lace-weight.

Starting to knit it up on size 000 needles . . .

And a sock! And a bit! Because otherwise there would never be any progress pics!

Seen on Ebay

2010-02-25T19:41:01Z

Screenshot and text:

Up for bid are two jars of fresh air from Mt.Whistler, of the Vancouver Olympics 2010. Jars are glass preserving with wide mouth lids and bands that each hold 8 oz. For those who want a piece of Olympic History but are unable to travel to the area. I would have gotten the popular red canadian gloves to offer but they were just to hard to get and were rarely in stock.Shipping price includes shipping confirmation and will send out the next business day after payment confirmation. This years games are almost over. Dont miss out.

Um . . . yeah . . . no.

A plea to the citizenry

2010-02-23T23:32:30Z

Walking around today, I saw another example of the shameful behavior of the fashion industry. A young woman was strolling along in a pair of Converse high-tops, sadly made of the fine shaggy pelt of a black muppet.

The average consumer is unaware of this tragedy, so that even a careful shopper can be taken in. To avoid comment, many manufacturers label their products as "faux fur", rather than honestly describe their colorful furry creations as genuine muppet.

So cheerful, so full of life, I cannot imagine what would cause an otherwise rational human being to choose to wear the skins of these happy little creatures. Does a muppet really look better as a boot than as the care-free sprite that it was meant to be?

It is true that not all of them are small and cute. But they are trusting and innocent creatures, ekeing a living out of entertaining humans. Should we repay their gift of themselves by stealing the fur coats off their backs to cover our own?

Dear friends, only through education will the average citizen come to recognize the true nature of the colorful fur products that have been purchased under the guise of "faux fur". I implore you to protest this senseless slaughter in letters to your editor, to your congressperson, and to your local representative. Demand that the trade of such articles be stopped. Raise funds to set aside nature preserves, so that this delightful creatures can live out their lives as intended by their Creator. You *can* make a difference!

Would you be able to look into this creature's face if you had not at least tried?

Zmirak: "All Your Church Are Belong to Us"

2010-02-18T18:01:08Z

Go back to Hell. Our Church belongs to Christ.

Zmirak very nicely articulates why bare churches and felt banners and choose-your-own-adventure liturgy are not good enough.

All Your Church Are Belong to Us
by John Zmirak
2/17/10
"Why do you people care so much about externals?" my non-Trad friends sometimes ask me. And they deserve an answer. A few weeks back, my delightfully contentious colleague here, Mark Shea, waded into the conflict between those who describe themselves simply as "orthodox" Catholics, and those who consider themselves "traditionalists." (Just to save space in the comments box, I mean by this term people who favor the traditional liturgy -- not those who associate with organizations under ecclesiastical suspension.)This line has begun to blur more and more in the wake of Pope Benedict XVI's Summorum Pontificum, which we Trads greeted as a kind of Emancipation Proclamation -- even as many of our bishops answered it with liturgical Jim Crow.

Still, the division is palpable. It was lying right there on the table, for any who cared to palpate it, last week when I went to dinner with a Trad-minded colleague and a visiting author who'd come to speak at our college on G. K. Chesterton. (The presentation was riveting, and I highly recommend Dale Ahlquist's talks and books.) Like the good Mr. Shea, our speaker is a convert, and he shared with Mark a puzzlement at the apparent fixation traditionalists have on restoring former elements of the liturgy and other Catholic practices that are not essential, and resisting innovations that are not inherently evil. Having come from churches that didn't have the Eucharist, and remaining through God's grace flush with gratitude for the sacraments, many converts really don't understand what the rest of us are nattering on about. We who grew up privileged may seem like sulky, spoiled kids. We owe these good people an explanation.

Sometimes they think we just care about aesthetics. One visit to a Sunday Latin Low Mass without music, recited soundlessly into a marble altar, should put that idea to flight. Compared to a Novus Ordo liturgy in the vernacular, and from a purely human point of view, attending Low Mass can be dull. You feel like you are eavesdropping. If you follow along in the missal, you can feel that you are watching a very solemn foreign film without any subtitles, except that you have the screenplay. There's a reason the old rubrics relegated Low Mass to weekdays, and called (though they were rarely answered) for sung Solemn Mass on Sundays and holy days. Pope Pius X wasn't kidding when he asked for parishes to revive Gregorian chant and teach it to the laity. Nor is there any good reason why Latin Mass congregations don't give the responses along with the servers -- except perhaps the fear that this is somehow the first step down a long road that leads to clown Mass. Get over it, fratres.

Other people think that we are a band of Latin scholars, desperate to put our dusty declensions to practical use. Again, one conversation with the congregants at the coffee hour will dash that infant theory against the rocks. Most of us studied Latin, if at all, as part of vocabulary practice for the SATs, and follow the English side of the missal. I don't know a single Traditionalist who wouldn't prefer the old Mass, facing the altar, said in English, to the Novus Ordo chanted in Latin facing the people. While the universal language of the Church is still to be revered for all the reasons that Vatican II prescribed in Sacrosanctum Concilium, it isn't Why We Fight.

Still more people think that we cling to the ancient liturgy as a piece of nostalgia for a Church that we vaguely remember, or heard about from our parents, whose schools drummed a stark, simplistic orthodoxy into hordes of dutiful children; whose religious orders and seminaries weren't riddled with rank heresy and extensive networks of secret homosexuals; whose bishops manfully echoed the traditional teachings of centuries without constant goading from Rome; whose buildings and services at least strove for dignity and austerity, even if they sometimes descended into tedium and kitsch.

I'm tempted to say at this point: That's right. That's exactly what we want. Or at least what we'd settle for. What faithful Catholic wouldn't, if he could right now, wave a magic wand and swap the American church of 2010 for that of 1940 -- with all its acknowledged abuses and hidden worldliness? I'll take the blustering Cardinal Spellman over the scheming Archbishop Weakland any day.

But, of course, things never work like that. You can't bring back the Habsburgs by hanging their banners in your apartment (trust me, I've tried), and we cannot undo the catastrophic "renewal" launched in the name of the Second Vatican Council (often in plain defiance of its documents) by clicking our heels and reciting, "There's no place like Rome" -- even in ecclesiastical Latin. Some confrontation between the Church and late Western modernity was inevitable, and if it hadn't happened at the Council, it would have occurred some other way. The Eastern churches didn't vandalize their liturgy; have they been spared the ravages of secularization? Not according to my Greek Orthodox friends, who show up for the last ten minutes of liturgy each week to pick up blessed bread and join their friends for baklava and gossip. The liturgy is miraculous, but it doesn't work like magic: Rev. Teilhard de Chardin had said the Tridentine Mass for decades even as he invented Catholic Scientology; conversely, his sometime housemate at New York’s St. Ignatius Loyola, the holy Rev. John Hardon, obediently switched missals with every tinkering that came to him from the bishops.

Of course, there's something to be said for a liturgy whose very nature resists and defeats abuses. The Ordinary Form can be extraordinarily reverent when said by a holy priest. I've been to such liturgies hundreds of times, and I'm grateful for every one. On the other hand, the new liturgy, with all its Build-a-Bear options, is terribly easy to abuse. The old Mass reminds me of what they used to say about the Catholic Church and the U.S. Navy: "It's a machine built by geniuses so it can be operated safely by idiots." The old liturgy was crafted by saints, and can be said by schlubs without risk of sacrilege. The new rite was patched together by bureaucrats, and should only be safely celebrated by the saintly.

There are plenty of theological arguments by men more learned than I -- such as Michael Davies and, er, the current pope -- for the superiority of various elements in the traditional liturgy, such as the priest facing the altar instead of the audience. (I use that word advisedly, given the theatrical quality that took over so many parishes since the 1970s.) There are serious objections to many of the changes made in the prayers of the Novus Ordo -- and they were made by the man who used to hold the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's job at the Vatican, Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, who presented them to Pope Paul VI, begging him not to issue the Novus Ordo. (Imagine Cardinal Ratzinger begging Pope John Paul II not to impose altar girls. Who knows -- maybe he did!) Although I recommend reading these arguments, I won't rehearse them here, since all of them are prudential. Adopting Lutheran or Anglican language in the Mass probably didn't cause the current crisis of belief in the Real Presence, and cutting such language by eliminating all but the First Eucharistic Prayer might not do much to resolve it. (Still, it's worth a try!)

So what is the practical motivation that drives us Trads to schlep to distant or dangerous parishes, to irritate our spouses and incommode our pastors, to detach from local churches our grandparents scrimped to build? Why insist on external things, like kneeling for communion on the tongue, male altar servers, and the priest facing the altar? None of these, I'll admit for the 5,000th time, is essential for sacramental validity or credal orthodoxy; isn't being a stickler on such issues a wee bit pharisaical, even prissy? (I have encountered the odd Trad activist with an unnatural attachment to silk and lace -- pastors wearily call them "daughters of Trent" -- but they aren't the norm. Weary fathers of six or seven pack most Latin Mass pews.)

Here's what we Trads have realized, that the merely orthodox haven’t: Inessential things have power, which is why we bother with them in the first place. In every revolution, the first thing you change is the flag. Once that has been replaced, in the public mind all bets are off -- which is why the Commies and Nazis filled every available space with their Satanic banners. Imagine, for a moment, that a newly elected president replaced the Stars and Stripes with the Confederate battle flag. Or that he replaced our 50 stars with the flag of Mexico. Let's say he got away with doing this, and wasn't carried off by the Secret Service to an "undisclosed location." What would that signify for his administration? If people accepted the change, what else would they be likely to accept?

It's no accident that the incessant tinkerings with the liturgy came at the same time as the chaos surrounding the Church's teaching on birth control. As Anne Roche Muggeridge pointed out in her indispensable history The Desolate City, the Church's position on contraception was "under consideration" for almost a decade -- which led pastors to tell troubled couples that they could follow their consciences. If the Church could change the Mass, ordinary Catholics concluded, the nuances of marital theology were surely up for grabs. No wonder that when Paul VI reluctantly issued Humanae Vitae, people felt betrayed. (It didn't help when the Vatican refused to back a cardinal who tried to enforce the document, which made it seem like the pope was winking.)

The perception that the Church was in a constant state of doctrinal flux was confirmed by the reality that her most central, sacred mystery was being monkeyed with -- almost every year. I remember being in grammar school when they told us, "The pope wants us to receive Communion in the hand now." (He didn't; it was an abuse that was forced on the Vatican through relentless disobedience until it became a local norm, but never mind.) Then, a few years later, "The pope wants us to stand for Communion." A few more grades, and we heard, "The pope wants us to go to Confession face to face." What had seemed a solid bulwark of formality and seriousness was suddenly shifting with every year's hemlines -- which is precisely what the heretics conspiring to change the Church's teaching had in mind. That is why they pushed for these futile, pastorally destructive changes of "inessentials" -- as a way of beating down resistance to changing essentials. And, in a worldly sense, they almost succeeded.

The campaign of dissenting priests, nuns, and (let's be honest) bishops culminated, in America, with the Call to Action Conference, which its leading advocate John Francis Cardinal Dearden described in 1977 as "an assembly of the American Catholic community ." This gathering of 2,400 radical Catholic activists was composed of "people deeply involved with the life of the institutional Church and appointed by their bishops" (emphasis added). The Conference approved "progressive resolutions, ones calling for, among other things, the ordination of women and married men, female altar servers, and the right and responsibility of married couples to form their own consciences on the issue of artificial birth control." This is the mess made by the bishops appointed by the author of Humanae Vitae, which his rightly beloved successor John Paul II spent much of his pontificate trying to clean up. What we Trads feel compelled to point out is that he couldn't quite finish the job, and that the deformations of the Roman liturgy enacted by (you guessed it) appointees of Paul VI helped enable all these doctrinal abuses. They changed the flag.

At this point in my discussion of the gravest theological issues that threatened the faith of Catholics in this country, I wish to call your attention to a stupid YouTube video, which gave this essay its willfully illiterate title: "All Your Base Are Belong to Us."

For those of you too young to have experienced the incessant assault upon the sacred that was the liturgical "reform," or grateful converts who don't understand all the fuss, I beg of you: Please watch this video. In fact, stop reading and watch the video first, then come back to finish this essay. I can wait.

The film takes the Pidgin English from a cheesy Japanese computer game and places it everywhere: on street signs, in Budweiser ads, on cigarette packs. At first, the effect is funny, and you wonder about the geeks who spent their time doing all this Photoshop. But keep watching. Savor the effect as the same mindless, meaningless slogan is plastered everywhere, on every blessed thing. Pretty quickly, it starts to be creepy. By the end, you might feel like Japanese anime aliens have in fact taken over. You can see their fingerprints everywhere . . .

That is how it felt to be young and Catholic in the 1970s. Every sacred thing had to be changed, every old thing replaced with a new one, every complicated beauty plastered over by the cheap and the easy. The message was almost subliminal, but by that means all the more powerful: All Your Church Are Belong to Us.

And by changing back the flag, by taking back our Mass, we are saying: Go back to Hell. Our Church belongs to Christ.

Ash Wednesday

2010-02-17T23:47:37Z

I went to the 7 a.m. Mass this morning. Father went a bit light on the ashes, it seemed. Other people's foreheads were barely smudged, and when I checked mine in the rear-view mirror afterwards, I couldn't see them at all. The ashes darkened a bit as the day's gone on, and now I can make them out near my hairline if I look closely. I guess trying to miss them by aiming high when crossing myself didn't work.

I also haven't seen any other smudged faces today. :(

Just me and donnavieve hanging out and not eating leftover King Cake. :(

Maru, the cat! :D

2010-02-17T19:39:54Z

Why must non-North American cats be so round-y and squishable? *squeezes dem*

Praying mantiseses are cute when they're trying to catch cursors :D

2010-02-17T00:12:56Z

Also!

2010-02-16T20:08:19Z

Daughter was in a spelling bee on Friday, and she won!

Mardi Gras!

2010-02-16T18:18:10Z

One of the faculty brought in a genuine New Orleans Mardi Gras-issue King Cake. A chocolate pecan bourbon King Cake. I knew about regular King Cakes, but *this* is a revelation.

At this moment, I'm eating another slice with more coffee. I'll be on top of the curtains if you need me.

Who knew . . .

2010-02-08T23:05:15Z

I have discovered a new Friday-friendly, kid-approved dish: Pasta alla Vodka!

Pasta alla Vodka

from the Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond

•1 pound Pasta
•2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
•2 Tablespoons Butter
•1 whole Medium Onion, Chopped Finely
•2 cloves (to 3 Cloves) Garlic, Chopped
•¾ cups (to 1 Cup) Vodka
•1 can Tomato Puree [14 oz can of Hunt's tomato sauce]
•1 cup Heavy Cream
•1 pinch Red Pepper Flakes
•¼ teaspoons (to 1/2 Teaspoon) Salt
•Freshly Ground Black Pepper, To Taste
•1 cup Grated Parmesan Cheese
Preparation Instructions
Cook pasta according to package directions, being careful not to overcook.

In a large skillet over medium heat, add olive oil and butter. When butter is melted, add in chopped onion and garlic. Stir and allow to cook for two minutes. Pour in vodka. Stir and cook for three minutes. Add in tomato puree and stir.

Reduce heat to low and stir in cream. Allow to simmer, being careful not to overheat. Stir in red pepper flakes, salt and pepper.

Drain the pasta, reserving 1 cup of pasta water in case sauce is too thick. Add cooked pasta to the sauce, tossing to combine. Splash in a little water if it needs it. Stir in Parmesan cheese.

Pour mixture into large serving bowl. Garnish with more Parmesan cheese.

Eat it out of the serving bowl. Faint. Repeat as needed.

It worked pretty much as written. I used some kind of sweet yellow onion, instead of the standard kind, and an extra clove of garlic. I found I didn't need to reserve the cooking water because I substituted Coffe Mate, which is not as thick. Heresy, I know, but it tasted okay. Think of all those calories saved!

Daughter LOVED it! She ate it for dinner and then demanded leftovers for lunch and dinner the next day. She did have a point about the onions, though; I'll have to try to dice them more finely next time.

Random Daughter stuff

2010-02-03T18:49:15Z

Daughter's new favorite movie is "Get Smart". (We've seen it three times since the weekend.) It was really, really good, actually, and did not at all deserve to be in the clearance bin at the grocery store. Super funny straight-man humor and action and explosions and gadgets and stuff. I did have to explain about the shoe phone, though.

We also made gnocci together this weekend, together with a somewhat angry meat sauce. (It's amazing what half a teaspoon of chili flakes will do!) I think we need another recipe for the gnocci, though, because they didn't want to hold their shape while waiting to be boiled. :( We had a pile of them made, then started cooking the ones from the top of the pile, when we found out that the earlier-made ones had glommed together. D: Frantic re-rolling, cutting, and forking between batches. D:D: They tasted okay, though, even if they were ugly. Daughter was amused that some of them looked like seafood; she found a fish and a prawn.

She could not say gnocci correctly, though.

NO-kee?

YAW-kee?

nuh-YAW-kee?

nuh-YO-kee?

:)

Writer's Block: Obama drama

2010-01-28T16:54:53Z

I didn't listen to it except for a short clip on the radio, which the dj immediately followed with this song:

I LOLed.