A Bluestocking Knits

Carole Lombard You scored 11% grit, 19% wit, 38% flair, and 42% class!

You’re a little bit of a fruitcake, but you always act out in style. You have a good sense of humor, are game for almost anything, but you like to have nice things about you and are attracted to the high life. You’re stylish and modern, but you’ve got a few rough edges that keep you from attaining true sophistication. Your leading men include William Powell, Fredric March, and Clark Gable. Watch out for small planes. Find out what kind of classic leading man you’d make by taking the Classic Leading Man Test.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 0% on grit You scored higher than 37% on wit You scored higher than 37% on flair You scored higher than 75% on class

Link: The Classic Dames Test written by gidgetgoes on Ok Cupid

A few things I’m having to adjust to (most good, some not so much), now that we’re home —

Tidied up some things on the blog — finally figured out how to make the buttons link directly, instead of having to list the titles and the buttons, so I’m feeling very pleased with myself!

(Still can’t get that Lace Knitting Ring button to come out the right size, though….)

I am annoyed that I cannot make the TypeLists sort in alphabetical order while ignoring the initial article.  Also it sorts non-capitalized titles at the end of the alphabet.  Why??  The cataloger in me wants to use the spelling or fomat the author chooses, but then I can’t stand seeing them out of order! — my apologies from a distance, therefore, to those bloggers whose titles start with "The" or "A" or who use the lower case, as I have omitted the initial articles and capitalized the titles in order to get them to sort properly.  (Surely it can’t be difficult to write a program that recognizes "L" and "l" as the same letter?)

I’m also trying to use up the stuff in the cupboards, so today I made the oatmeal cookies from "Who Wants Seconds?".  Truly an international affair — Australian flour and Hawaiian sugar, German baking powder, New Zealand organic eggs, in a Hong Kong kitchen, from a blog by an expat American in London.

Run over now, don’t walk, and get the recipe! they’re great, chewy with a nice bit of oomph from the oatmeal.  I used dried blueberries instead of chocolate chips, since I had them — this makes it sound like a compromise, but in fact it was delicious.  Healthy, too, with oatmeal and blueberries, right?!  I’ll have another, then.

Marjorie tagged me for this, so at the risk of sounding overly meme-ish, here’s another one!

Marjorie’s answers are here, and I will in turn tag a handful of my favorite bloggers, off-list, in case they have already done it (I’ll check first, but sometimes things get past the old 20-400s, you know), they really are too busy, or they are, as The Farmette Report puts it, allergic to memes.

If you want to participate here’s what to do: remove the blog at #1 from the following list and move everyone up a spot, then add your blog’s name and link in the #5 spot.  Check to make sure the links are still attached if you cut-and-paste.

1. nepenthe’s misadventures
2. dynamiteknits
3. purly brites
4. HKknitter
5. A Bluestocking Knits

Five Things I Miss From Childhood

Pineapple upside-down cake.  My grandma (on my dad’s side) was not terribly maternal, not like my other grandma, who was famous for her cooking and sewing and doting.  But Grandma S. made the pineapple upside-down cake of the gods.  Rectangular, in a 9×13 pan, no maraschino cherries ever, canned pineapple, just a basic upside-down cake that somehow became one of the most exquisite things I have ever tasted.  Always with corners, because during baking the butter and brown sugar would collect at the edges, thus especially in the deep corners, and come out of the pan with a chewy, caramelly richness that contrasted wonderfully with the moist whiteness of the cake.  I have made lots of pineapple upside-down cakes in my time, and they are delicious, and still in my Top Five Cakes, but they are never the same as Grandma’s, somehow.

Come to think of it, I miss grandmas.  I don’t have either one, any more.  Just thinking this brings tears to my eyes.  They both became rather human, as I grew up, but that doesn’t make my childhood memories any less idyllic.

Pure, unadulterated, all-consuming reading.  In my grade school days, I used to go through phases when I’d read the same thing over and over again — or at least it seemed that way — when the sign-out card at the public library was filled with my loopy, childish signature all the way down the list.  I could read all the time, whenever I wanted, not like now when not only do I not have the time to call my own, but I don’t really have the patience or even the concentration to sit and read all day.  There was the summer of Laura Ingalls Wilder, when I did nothing but read the Little House books, the whole summer, I think.  My favorite was "Little Town on the Prairie", but that may have been because the library had only one or two copies, so it was kind of rare and special.  I wrote to the Museum in Mansfield, and a very nice lady put up with all my questions, graciously and patiently.  I think I had half an idea that she really was Laura.  I had a Trapp Family phase, brought on by, if I remember correctly, the first movie I ever saw in a theatre, "The Sound of Music" — one look at those glorious Austrian mountainsides on the wide screen, and I was hooked.  I read the play, the original book, wore out the soundtrack (my record had a skip near the beginning of "Do Re Mi" so that Maria said "do re mi fa so la ti — [click] easier," and I still can’t help hearing it that way).  There was also a phase when I read, probably alternately, "The Lost Queen of Egypt" and "The Egypt Game" — the first starting a lifelong passion for Ancient Egypt.  This particular phase was the occasion of my first foray into the adult side of the library, a tremendous and momentous day in my memory — the first check-out was probably Howard Carter’s "The Discovery of the Tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen".  A later phase was Tolkien and Narnia — I can’t remember which I read first, now.  I was given a copy of "The Hobbit" for Christmas in 1975 (ack), and I tried to read it but just couldn’t get past the first page — what was he talking about? — put it away, then picked it up some time later, high school I think, and it hit me like a bolt of lightning.  I’ve read the whole cycle, and Lewis’ Narnia series, umpteen times since then.  So, the age of this kind of reading is long past, and while I appreciate that the books available to me are much more varied, both in selection and subject matter, I miss that head-in-the-clouds obsessiveness of childhood reading.

(My mind is boggling at these links.  "Oh, look, the Museum still has those sunbonnets!  Lots more stuff now, though, patterns! will have to check that out…"  "Hmm, Agathe’s written a memoir, maybe I’ll get that from the library.  I haven’t thought about them for yonks.  Johannes is running the lodge in Stowe!"  (Can’t seem to get my head around the fact that Johannes is probably in his seventies by now.)  "What about that movie?"

Our cabin in the San Gabriel Mountains.  It was a little stone cabin, one main room with a lean-to kitchen at the back.  There was no automobile access, except for the forestry-service rangers, so we hiked in the two miles on foot, packing our supplies — well, Dad carried them, of course.  We had no electricity or running water, and only an outhouse which was full of spiders and possibly snakes as well.  Much of the time was taken up with maintenance, as there were strict fire regulations about the closeness of brush and leaves to the cabins and such, but there was also playing in the creek only steps from our front door, tiger lilies, exploring with our beloved German Shepherd, clambering over granite boulders, the everpresent smell of bay, card games by lamplight at night.  I remember a ranger coming by once, on a bay horse, and I was utterly enchanted — I must have been very small, because the horse was huge, with gloriously long black legs and a shiny auburn coat, and the ranger, from the toes of his boots to the distinctive silhouette of his hat against the sky, was like a giant or a prince from a fairy tale.  I love bays to this day, and I confess to a soft spot for rangers as well.  (I wouldn’t be surprised if my fondness for the Dúnedain relates directly to this memory.)  My parents eventually found the upkeep of the cabin too much for them, and sold it for $1,000 cash.  The cabin was still there, remodeled a bit but still recognizable, a few years ago when I hiked in with some friends….

It’s hard to think of a fifth one, hard to decide, anyway, as the others bring bring in a rush of related memories — driving towards the canyon on almost completely unpopulated freeways, going to a similarly uncrowded Disneyland (you could do all the rides in one day, easy!), walking to places like the library by myself from as early as what, seven or eight years old, phone numbers that started with letters like EDgewood or ATlantic.  But I’ll say — this just came to mind — a fireplace.  The house I grew up in had a fireplace in the living room, and even though we lived in southern California, we often lit a fire in the cooler weather, simply for the enjoyment of watching the flames dance.  In January or February, it was often cold enough to appreciate the warmth, too.  None of the houses I’ve lived in since then has had a fireplace, and when David and I bought our first house together, we were delighted to see the fireplace at one end of the living room but were so nervous and distracted by all the details and the momentousness that we didn’t notice that there was no chimney.  It’s fake, gas-only, no chimney.  Maybe we’ll take some of that $100,000,000 and put in a real one.

Um, Marjorie?  Are you still awake?

Ten Years Ago — August 1995, I was getting ready to go back to college, after some years’ hiatus, feeling more than a little nervous because I had decided to live on campus.  Turned out that I had a great time, and despite the little annoyances of dorm life, it was a year that I will cherish in my memory.  I was also, ten years ago, planning my wedding, to take place the following June.

Five Years Ago — August 2000, I was adjusting to life with a then-eight-month-old baby, our first child, the lovely Laura.  She was crawling by then, getting close to walking (which she would do at ten months) and talking.

One year ago — August 2004, I was feeling the utter relief of not being a temporarily-single-parent anymore, as David had just come back from his first long trip to Hong Kong, four weeks.  Since this was pre-Bluestocking, I was also doing rather a lot of genealogy, and working on my Bloomsbury Shell cushion.

Yesterday — Trying, not terribly successfully, to get over the effects of an inexplicably sleepless night.  I can say with complete certainty that I don’t function very well on two hours’ sleep.

Today — Getting ready for the relocation survey tomorrow morning; i.e. deciding how much we can carry in our luggage and what we will ship (i.e. do without for 6 to 8 weeks).  Swimming in the afternoon.

Tomorrow — Relocation survey.  Change our library books or more swimming in the afternoon?

Five Snacks I Enjoy — Pepperidge Farms Orange Milanos, scones, cashews, and I will be a bit sanctimonious here and say Granny Smith apples, although obviously my snacks tend to be more in the sweetie line.  Häagen-Dazs Tiramisu….

Five Bands/Singers Whose Songs I Know Most of the Words To — Dan Zanes, The Beatles, Split Enz, Norah Jones, The Boston Camerata (okay, not most of their lyrics, but I think rather a lot).  I must point out that this list does not include all of my favorite bands/singers — I could probably never learn all of the words to Cecilia Bartoli‘s songs, for instance, and I’ve actually owned only one Beach Boys album, to my surprise….)

Five Things I Would Do With $100,000,000 —

   

Buy one of these (with change left over!),

 

or one of these,

or better yet, this,

or start one of these,

and be sure to give at least half of that sum to charity.

Five Locations I’d Like to Run Away To — England.  Sweden and/or Norway.  England.  Italy.  England. 

 

Oh, alright, England, Sweden and/or Norway, Italy, Vancouver, or Northern California, the last being probably the only one that might really be in my future.

Five Bad Habits I Have —  Not finishing things I’ve started (that novel, for instance).  Putting off doing the dishes until the next day, in fact "not starting things I should be doing" might be more accurate.  Laziness.  Being sarcastic when I’ve lost my temper.  "Forgetting" things I didn’t really want to remember.

Five Things I Like Doing — Reading, knitting, cooking, gardening.  Mothering.

Five Things I Would Never Wear — Stiletto heels, fake fingernails, a thong, miniskirts, this,

Five TV Shows I Like — I don’t actually watch much television, so this is tricky; we don’t have cable, and then got out of the habit of watching network TV when the girls were little.  I must confess, though, that Laura and I were quite fond of "Supermarket Sweep" on PAX for a while.  I liked "Star Trek: Voyager" and the other new Star Trek series ("Voyager" was probably the one I managed to watch most often).  I loved the old "Masterpiece Theatre" and "Mystery!" series.  Maybe "Providence" was the last show I remembered to watch regularly.

Five Movies I Like — Hard to narrow it down to five, but "Persuasion", "Notting Hill", "The Music Man", "The Philadelphia Story", and "Shakespeare in Love" are perennial favorites.

Five Famous People I’d Like to Meet — I will change this slightly to Five Bloggers I’d Like to Have a Knitgroup With, and say Ann and Kay of Mason-Dixon Knitting (hoping they count as one, since that means I get an extra person), Siow Chin of Little Purl of the Orient (ooh, wait, I’ve met her!), Julia of Mind of Winter, Julia of Moth Heaven, and Kate of Needles on Fire.  Stephanie can’t make it because she’s still on the author circuit.  (Very hard to narrow this one down, too, obviously.  I would like to meet all of the bloggers I read regularly.  These I’ve mentioned have buttons — this is an illustrated meme, after all.)

Five Favorite Toys — My All-Clad saucepan, this laptop, our new Thomas the Tank Engine wooden train set, the indoor playground at our complex, and the air-conditioning which has made this summer bearable.

Five Biggest Joys at the Moment — Getting ready, although this expat experience has been wonderful and I’ve met some really nice people and seen really fantastic things, to go home.  The sudden blooming of my three-year-old, who has always been rather overshadowed by her precocious older sister.

The adrenaline rush I get from reading really good blogs — knitting, crafts, cooking, travel, gardening, it doesn’t really matter what subject.  These flowers, I don’t know what they are but their gardenia-like scent is heavenly,

And, of course, the ever-present delight in a little silliness —

Pholph’s Scrabble Generator My Scrabble© Score is: 21. What is your score? Get it here.