...that is if we judge "culturedness" by a random book list.

I found this over on Naturally Optimistic. I've seen these books lists before and I'm procrastinating, so why not.

The instructions:
In the list of books below, bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you want to read, cross out the ones you won’t touch with a ten-foot pole, put a cross (+) in front of the ones on your book shelf, and asterisk (*) the ones you’ve never heard of.
(I can't figure out how to "cross-out" in MovableType, so I'll just write "NO" in front).

NO1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. +The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. +The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. +The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L. M. Montgomery)
9. *Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. *A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
NO11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. *Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
NO13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
NO16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. *Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
NO19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. +The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J. D. Salinger) [in high school]
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) [as a kid]
24. *The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte) [in high school]
28. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell) [in high school]
35. *The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. *The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. *The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. *I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. *The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. *The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. *The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. *Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. *The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. *She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. *The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. *Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. *The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
NO57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. +The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood) [multiple times, I own 2 copies and have cited it in my dissertation!]
60. *The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. +Interview with the Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. *Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo) [in French class in French]
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. +Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez) [I don’t know if I finished it, but I read parts when in college and the guy I was dating was reading it for class]
73. *Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. *The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. +The World According To Garp (John Irving) [I started it, got mad at it, but will finish it eventually]
79. *The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. *Not Wanted On the Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck) [in high school]
83. *Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. *Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. +Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. *The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. *Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. *Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. *In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. *The Outsiders (S. E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. *A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

What can you and I conclude from this list?
1. I hate Harry Potter. Why? Just do. I like to hate things that are wildly popular.
2. There's a lot of books I've never heard of and there's a lot of books I have no interest in reading.
3. What the hell have I read since high school that "counts"?
4. Why aren't the Illiad and Odyssey on the list? I've read those. Or what about The Stranger by Camus? Why does Harry Potter get so many damn rungs on the list? Crap. I just looked at my bookshelf and one of the Harry Potter's is on there! That must be Kevin's.
5. I've just finished three great books by Richard Russo, but I think I just read too much non-fiction. Actually we have 3 bookshelves full of non-fiction and only 1 shelf for fiction. (I should also mention I have 2 full shelves of knitting books and way too many shelves of college textbooks. I mean really, I've been lugging around an Organic Chemistry textbook for 8 years now... I don't think it will ever be useful!)

(Well, I got too busy once I got to work and didn't get to update this immediately, and in the meantime, Wanda guessed correctly in the comments!)

After finishing Clementine and the SnB project, I decided I needed something new. (Yes, yes that Circle of Friends baby blanket needs finishing and the baby it is for is due any day now.) I realized that it had been a long, long time since I made a sweater. In fact, the last real sweater I completed was a year ago when I made Glimmer for my mom. There were three kinda sweaters since then, Glint, Ms Marigold, and Roundabout Leaf Tank. Before Glimmer, there was Top Secret, the failed attempt to knit a sweater for Kevin. Of those just mentioned, I only wear Glint, and even of my older sweaters, Klaralund and Mariah only make it into the rotation rarely (Klaralund's sleeves are way too long, if I were smart, I'd rip them out and shorten them. Mariah is nice, but the body is a bit boxy and I don't fully like what I did to the collar). The others like the Suss Zip Up and Kate are buried away. And Pseudo-Skully only comes out on the frigid snow shoveling days (that's what Lopi is good for!), of which we had none this winter.

Since finishing the Roundabout Tank, I've been afraid of knitting a sweater and thus stuck to hats, scarves, blankets, and socks. I've seen patterns that I like, but I'm recognizing that often I like the pattern because of how it is styled in the picture and not necessarily because the particular sweater would look good on me. I've been nervous about gauge and swatches and yarn substitutions, and so no sweaters.

I finally decided though that I want a Spring-type sweater. Something cottony that can be worn when a little chilly indoors, or when it warms up outside as a light jacket. In comes some Blue Sky Alpaca Cotton and out comes of the Knitting from the Top book, and a sweater is born. I made a mistake in my increases last night at knitting, so the sweater already has a "fragment of character" as Pam called my small flaws in Clementine, but I already love it. It is a cardigan, and I plan to knit on a buttonband and neckband. I'm thinking 3/4 length sleeves, but I'll base that on how much yarn I have left.

My intention is to make a sweater that I love and that I will want to wear constantly.

The top-down Blue Sky Alpaca Cotton cardigan is zipping along (and needs a better shorter name). This picture is from a few hours ago when I finished the second skein (the fronts are curling under a bit here). I'm adding some shaping to the body, and so far my calculations seem perfect. The fit is amazing and I'm so excited about this cardi that I can't put it down.

It was a good day...

Found out from my advisor that the revisions to my dissertation aren't too major. (I guess I really am almost finished, usually we'd have lots of back and forth with revisions). Now it is time to try to coordinate 4 very different schedules to get an official date set for the defense.

Found this on the doorstep...

Guess what's inside!!!

Rockin' Sock Club!! I'm very excited about jumping on this bandwagon. Mostly for the baby skein of emergency sock yarn! Haha!!

Pretty Monsoon!

The cardi is zip zipping along!

.

These pictures are actually from last night. (I've tucked the needles into my belt). I put the body on hold because I was afraid I was going to run out of yarn and started a sleeve to see much yarn it would take. At a talk today and this evening, I finished the sleeve (it is elbow length) and I'm pretty sure I'll have enough yarn, so back to the body.

And lastly, a little game for you...

Can you guess what this is and where it came from?

First off, if you haven't marked your calendars and set your Tivos (or VCRs if you are technologically unadvanced like me), tomorrow night at 10pm on FX is the premier of "The Riches" starring my second love, Eddie Izzard.

at this stage, the foot ribbing is certainly making this sock look a little x-rated.

Here's a more sock-like picture.

The size 0 needles are a bit painful with the seemingly unending ribbing (and ugh, there's still another sock to go!). But I am loving it! Apparently my sock is swirly. I've seen some others around the net that are stripy and some that are pooling. It is really interesting to see how different gauges, knitters, start points affect the yarn.

(Oh and that fuzz from a few days ago is from the Squares Blanket. I got a sweater stone and spent an hour de-pilling the topside of the blanket. I have yet to tackle the underside, let alone all of my sweaters that are in dire need of a defuzzing!).

Kevin and I picked up Borat on DVD a few days ago and I finished knitting the button band/collar on the Blue Sky Alpaca Top Down Cardi while watching (it was a good distraction from getting a "full view" of the... uhm... wrestling scene).









What I Love about the Cardi...
1. It fits perfectly through the body.
2. No seaming
What Needs Improvement for next time...
1. Shorter depth in the raglans
2. More planning for the collar

I really loved making this sweater. I can't wait to find some buttons so that I can actually wear it. I also can't wait to make another one!

Dear designer of the Rockin' Socks Club 2007 kit #1 pattern (I'm sorry I can't find your name, but my pattern is crumbled in a ball across the room where it shall stay until I realize I don't remember how many stitches to cast on to start sock 2),

It's not you, it's me.

This 11 stitch cable (a five by one by five) is a massive undertaking that my hands are not equipped to deal with. The first row of cables was difficult, but not impossible. The part that killed it for me (and again this is my problem, not your pattern, I think the pattern is very lovely) was the second cable of the second cabled row. Not once, not twice, but thrice I pulled all my stitches off the needle and had to start over. (Honestly, your knitting shouldn't make you yell the f-word so loud that your finace comes running into the room yelling "what? what? what happened?!") After completing the row, I tried the sock on and it definitely won't fit if I continue with the cables (again this is my problem for deciding "gauge-smauge").

So I am quite sorry, but it seems you and I can't continue in this pattern. If we were to keep seeing each other, my fingers and palm would form blisters from the intense grip needed on the needles, and I would grow to resent you and the sock. And truthfully, we must consider the poor, innocent little sock in all of this. For for the sock's sake, we should probably decide to be just friends. I'll see you when the second toe-foot-heel comes around, but as far as the leg goes, our romance must end.

Who knows, maybe another pattern will come along and reignite our passion. But until then, let's just be friends.

Sincerely,
Dr. Girlfriend

Wow was the weather awful today. I'm just glad I didn't have to go into work, although I did have to pick Kevin up at the train station this evening. I've never driven so consistently at 15 mph in my life. And to all the jerkwads who imitate the SUV ads that show professional drivers on closed courses driving recklessly fast in bad weather, I hate you.


But while it was sleeting/snowing/icing outside, I was engaged with an endless monsoon inside. Apparently the combination of skipping the cables and having a tiny foot yielded a 9 inch leg. I've seen others barely eek out a 5-6 inch leg. I'm a bit worried I didn't divide my yarn as evenly as I thought. Sock 2 may only have a 3 inch leg.



Since it is an Inside Out reversible sock, here's both views...





And here's the sock watching Kevin play God of War II:



This picture apparently also shows off our TV on DVD collection down in the right-hand corner. Can you identify all 15 shows? (Which isn't quite fair because a few aren't completely visible).


Sock 2 here I come!

From today until April 6th, life will be crazy and scary as the past 6 years of work finally culminate with 2 job interviews and a dissertation defense, which will ultimately determine if the Dr. part of Dr. Girlfriend is deserved and if I will have something to do with myself after graduation (assuming there's a graduation).

I'll try to post when I can, but I won't make promises. I will be knitting because it is one of the few ways I'll keep sane. But if you don't hear from me for a while, I'm just too stressed to post.

Thank you for all the kind and supportive comments!

One interview complete... dissertation sent to Kinko's for printing and binding (this is just the defense copy, there will probably still be some revisions before the final copy)... less than 2 more rows of squares on the Circle of Friends baby blanket (it may yet be finished before the baby is... if I can locate my camera, I'll get a picture!)

Did you see this?!?!

Stitch n' Pitch

I just bought my Mets tix!

My Monsoons don't match. Not that I was expecting them to, but a mere half inch difference in the start of the green on the leg and they would have been amazingly close.







And that's without planning or trying. I actually like the way sock 2 is turning out in terms of the color. All of the fun stuff is on the front, while the back looks like this...





Boring old black. I've been working exclusively on these for the past few days. It always amazes me how right after the toe there is a blackhole in which you knit and knit and there's very little length added, but then suddenly you look down and the foot is finished. (Thursday night I was staying in a Bed and Breakfast before a Friday morning interview... I was smart in that I brought my laptop, knitting, and DVDs because there were no TVs there. After 5 episodes of Sex in the City the foot was finished and it was time for sleep).

I've got my 2 interviews finished and my dissertation sent out to my committee. This next week will be busy with creating my defense presentation. On the one hand it shouldn't be too hard because I know the stuff so well; on the other hand, I need to squish 3 studies worth of methodology and results (as well as an intro and discussion) into 30 minutes (on Friday at the interview I gave a 35 minute presentation on just 1 of the studies and even that was leaving out huge chunks of results).

with Ray Ray's mag for scale.

Thanks for the comments on the blanket. I really truly love it and don't want to give it up, but the baby is coming soon, so it will have to leave eventually. The Knitpicks Crayon yarn is perfect for a baby blanket, soft and snuggly and 100% cotton. I wouldn't recommend the yarn for anything that you want to have structure to unless you knit it at a really tight gauge. I'd also think about in the future, knitting the entire blanket at once instead of in rows (seaming garter stitch is not fun).


Oh, and this recent spate of nice weather is likely because I finished my Monsoons the other day. (Although I hate to admit that I don't actually like them that much. The colors are ok, but the ribbing on the bottom of the foot is not pleasant to wear).



But onto the title of the post...


Bad Book: