Less knitting, more doing

I didn't get to post this past weekend, because we've been doing a bit more running around. Saturday was mostly about going to the farmer's market, and seeing some friends, and having family over to dinner (a great big ruby chard and wild mushroom lasagna was made, and was enjoyed by all).

Yesterday, we got up early and headed for the Getty Center in Los Angeles. The girls and I had gone up there last spring with a friend, but Rick had never been. He and I had both been to the Getty Villa in Malibu, back when it was just The Getty, because there wasn't anywhere else, but the Center is new since we lived in L.A. The architecture is absolutely amazing; it's all made of travertine marble, which is not only a very warm color, but also has the impressions of fossils in it, which greatly pleased my entire family (they joys of being married to a hydrogeologist). Currently, there is a beautiful exhibit of illuminated manuscripts, which I loved, and was glad to see again. And, of course, we had to go see the Impressionist collection, which includes one of Monet's paintings from Giverny, as well as Van Gogh's The Irises. I sat with the girls and looked at them for a while; it's always nice to be reminded that great art is considered great because it is truly something beautiful, rather than because of some passing fad. I asked Older Daughter what she though was going on with the lone white iris in the painting, and she said to me, "It's like Pandora's box." My "huh" must have showed on my face, because she went on, "It's like the hope that was put in the bottom of the box. The one good thing among all the dark and evil." I thought that was an interesting understanding of the work.

They also had an exhibit of medieval armor, and an armorer giving a demonstration. He's done armor for all kinds of movies (this was L.A., after all), including Pirates of the Caribbean, as well as the armor for one of the tasks on The Amazing Race, and had brought some of his pieces for folks to play with while he pounded away. Rick and the kids thought this was great fun. Rick asked Younger Daughter to take a picture of him wearing gauntlets. Here is a six-year-old's perspective on a very tall man in scary gloves.
Snort. Younger Daughter and Older Daughter both tried on helmets.

I am declining to show the picture of me in a gauntlet, which they all insisted on taking to prove that I do, indeed, rule the family with an iron fist. Rick amused himself by playing with the option to call in to a cell phone number to get information about the sculptures in the garden. He thought that was pretty nifty.
And we left around sunset.
We went to Little Ethiopia, which is nearby, and found a place to have dinner. The food was wonderful, and we left very full, and very happy. (We are huge fans of Ethiopian food, and the only place in San Diego is a solid 30-40 minutes away, so we take it where we can find it.)

I got some knitting time in on the drive up (Rick kindly did that leg of the trip). See? There is fiber content in this blog, truly. The problem is that I'm currently working on The Endless Blob. It won't be a blob forever, but at the moment, it's totally unphotogenic, and is boring me to tears. It's Cat Bordhi's Calla Lily Bag, from The Knitter's Book of Yarn. I'm knitting it in Malabrigo, worsted weight, on size 11 needles, and it will be felted. I'm sticking with it because I really love the way the finished bag looks, and I could use a new shoulder bag. But it's a slog. It's a slog for a lot of reasons. First, it's all stockinette, all the time. This is to be expected, but that's not too much fun. Second, it's on very big needles, which does means that you get more fabric per stitch, but since I knit much more slowly on big needles, it's a wash. Third, I must admit to being very cranky with the way the design starts off. There's this small part of me that feels that it was made unnecessarily complicated; there are simpler ways to create a double-layered rectangle than to knit six inches in the round, then do a three-needle bind-off of the live stitches to create a line down the middle which then becomes one of the side edges of the bottom; then one must pick up stitches from the middle of one of the rectangles, but not both. Seriously. I mean, do you ever get the feeling that some people become so enamored of doing things differently that they do so for the sake of being different? I'm not accusing her in particular of doing this, I know linguists who do the same thing in theorizing problems, but it does occasionally occur to me that doing things simply is not inherently bad.

Aside from that crankiness, though, I must say again that I love the way this finished bag looks, so I will not hold it against the pattern. But it's bad blog fodder, because of the aforementioned miles of stockinette (in dark blue, no less), so I also won't be posting a picture for a while. I will say, though, that I absolutely adore the Malabrigo -- this yarn is like knitting with a very soft and happy cloud. I have also just ordered some alpaca yarn from the store that I went to the other day (I'll tell that whole story later), and have a plan for its use, which is spurring me on to get this thing done before that yarn comes. A bribe for myself, as it were.

I hope that you all have a very happy New Year's eve, with much merriment of whatever sort makes you merriest!

Shenanigans

The girls and I have been enjoying our days off together (they go back to school on the second, so this is pretty much it). Each morning, we've been lazing about, reading and playing with our new toys, until about 10, before getting ourselves dressed and heading out. I've also been sleeping quite a bit. I think I'm finally starting to catch up after those last stressful couple of weeks of the semester, when I wasn't getting even close to enough sleep. Turns out I'm one of those people who needs the higher end of average on the sleep scale. I went to my doctor a few years ago, insisting that something must be very very wrong with my thyroid, as I seemed to need 8 and a half or more hours of sleep a night. She tested everything under the sun, and then told me that people generally need between 8 and 10 hours a night, and that I was clearly on the higher end of the scale. I goggled at her and pointed out that I have two children. Never mind the job. And the husband. Where in the day were there 8.5 hours for sleeping? She laughed. I suggested that perhaps, if she couldn't prescribe me something for my thyroid, maybe she could write out a scrip for cocaine? I've heard that it's good for what ails you. She laughed again. I think she thought I was joking. Hmph.

The short of it is, though, that I have learned my lesson. If I choose to get by on less than I need, I can do that for a while, but I always end up having to pay the piper in the end, and this week, the piper and I have been settling up. If I run true to form, a couple more long nights should catch me up, and things will be back to normal.

On Wednesday, we went for a nice long hike together. Kia Ora (the dog) was very pleased, although she then slept for the rest of the day.
You can't see it from here, but we headed straight up one of the larger hills around here, and the view from the top was gorgeous -- ocean to the west, and mountains to the northeast. Very nice.

Yesterday, the girls and I spent a lovely couple of hours at a local bead store, and then at the bookstore (Older Daughter felt compelled to spend her gift card as soon after Christmas as possible; as I understand it, she has already read the two books she bought yesterday. Sigh). And last night, we all bundled up and headed out to the Wild Animal Park to see the winter lights. It was gorgeous, and veryvery cold (OK, I know that for those of you who don't live in SoCal, 37 degrees isn't really cold, but come on!).
It was (duh) dark (hence the name The Park at Dark), so the pictures are fairly blurry. But the girls got to go on the merry-go-round, and to do some of the crafty projects that were there.
We circumnavigated the whole park, even the parts that weren't lit up, which we all agreed was very spooky, but great fun. Of course, all the animals were asleep, but we caught the last keeper talk, and got to get up close and personal with a golden eagle. The lions were sleeping right up next to the glass; every single person who walked up to them put their hand up against the place where they were leaning, as if compelled by a need to get as close as possible to something so large and magnificent. I completely understand the urge -- knowing that they could kill a person in one pounce doesn't change at all that pull towards something so elemental. The evening was declared a success.

Today, the girls and I headed up to Temecula to check out a fiber store up there (the Temecula Valley Yarn Company) that has not only yarn, but spinning wheels and roving. It is a very nice shop, and the lovely lady who was working there was not only kind to me, but also to the girls, which always wins giant brownie points in my book. While my friend the lovely Rabbitch has publicly dyed a gorgeous roving for me (I am patiently waiting for it to dry, and am hoping that the border guards don't recognize its beauty and confiscate it), I figured it would be a good idea to scope out the local options for spinning for future reference, especially since I could take lessons on a wheel there should I ever decide to up the ante on this whole spinning thing. (I am all about planning ahead...)

In spinning news, I have been playing with the high-whorl spindle that I also got for Christmas. It is heavier than the turkish spindle, and so spins thicker yarn. I think I'm getting a teensy bit more even, but the fact remains that I find it easier to spin, then stop the spindle and draft a bit, then spin again. My drafting is much more even that way, and I don't end up with quite so many lumps. I am not saying that it's not lumpy, just that it's less lumpy than when I try to do everything at once. I am encouraged by Stell's reminder that she started spinning two months ago; her yarn is absolutely gorgeous, and dead even. Mine, well, not so much.
Meanwhile, I shall drink my glogg, and knit on my new project (more about that next time), and read the issues of Wild Fibers that I picked up at the store today (I'm considering subscribing -- does anyone get it already and have some input on that one?). The girls want to watch the new DVD of Hairspray they got for Christmas, which seems like an excellent opportunity to play with fiber while keeping them company. Happy Friday, all!

Well, it ain't yarn

But it's fun!
(It's a photo booth photo, so not the best, but the camera isn't available at this moment.) The ball right there in the front is from the roving that Wanda sent, spun and plied on the turkish spindle. About the only things that can be said for it are a) it is a beautiful color, and b) once it had been plied, it didn't twist back on itself. However, I would not call it "yarn", so much as "a twisted fiber object".

(BTW, does anyone else learning to spin have the Thomson Twins' song running through their head: "You spin me right round, baby, right round, like a record, baby..."? Anne? Or am I dating myself?)

Did you all see the beautiful container that the spinning is sitting in? Here's a better shot (where "better" is a relative term, meaning something more like "you can see more of the basket", since I'm still using photo booth), with some gratuitous dogness thrown in.
Kivrin got me this lovely wooden basket, with some help from her father, from our local farmer's market. I got all excited and promptly put my spinning gear in there, whereupon Rick said, somewhat sadly, "I'd thought maybe you could put some of your stash in there?" Turns out that he's been longing to repatriate the copper bowl that I've liberated from the kitchen for fibrous purposes. It holds an ever-changing arrangement of yarns whose colors feel seasonal to me (just before Christmas, it went from oranges and purples and browns to blues and whites and greys and blacks). Turns out Rick wanted to beat some egg whites in it the other day. I suggested that, since egg-white beating a) is not a regular activity in our home, and b) no longer requires a copper bowl since we invested in a handmixer a few years ago), but that c) I do knit every single day, and d) enjoy looking at my yarn even when I'm not knitting, he'd probably do better to give up his nefarious plans and allow the new borders between cooking and fiber to stay where they have been drawn. I think the long list of lettered items confused him enough that he's given up for the moment.

And, last photo booth shot of the day, since Atticus is feeling very left out.
Now, once he's decided that my lap is no longer fun, I can go back to trying to spin. Alas, he's gone all limp and is purring, so that may be a while...

Glade jul

Well, I promised you spinning and pickled herring, and though I am a day late, I will deliver.

First, the spinning, so that those of you who actually read this for fiber content can leave before we get to fish and vinegar. The two shall not, following the sage advice of Ms. P, be mixed (voice of experience here? inquiring minds want to know...). I'd hinted around to Rick (read: sent him urls which had everything I wanted) that the time had come for me to make an attempt at this spinning thing. A week or so ago, it occurred to me to check in with him and to suggest that, should he have chosen an alternate present route, it would be good to know, since all of my visions of Christmas day involved playing with roving and spindles while the girls played with their new toys, and we would all hate for me to be disappointed (OK, well, I would hate for me to be disappointed). He admitted that he had taken a different path in his gift selection, and I hastened to rectify the situation (in the end, these are presents from my parents who, having long ago given up on figuring out what I might want, kindly send me a little check each year so I can choose my own thing. This year, it's spinning. Thanks, guys!).

First, I ordered books. I had scoped out Amazon a few weeks ago, and come across these (offered together in one of those nifty deals that Amazon has that sucks you into buying more than you'd intended; in this case, though, I'm glad). They were Priscilla A. Gibson-Roberts' book Spinning in the Old Way, and A Handspindle Treasury from Spin-Off. Then I got in touch with Wanda and emailed with her about getting a Turkish spindle. Then I waited. I think that the postman started to think that I was "lonely", the way I was always waiting in the driveway for him. The books came, and I read them cover to cover in a matter of days. And I kept waiting. Finally, on Friday, my package from Wanda came. I would show you how she wrapped it in lovely holiday paper, except that I was too excited to take pictures before I unwrapped it (no, I am not ten years old).

The spindle is gorgeous. It is such a treat to have a tool that is made by a craftsman whose care in his work shows through so clearly. I have always loved William Morris' quote, "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." It has occurred to me, though, that even better might be, "Own nothing that you do not know to be useful and believe to be beautiful." I think that this spindle falls into that category. And, making it even better, it came with instructions (for which thank goodness), and wrapped in some pencil roving. How did Wanda know that I'd want to try to spin right away and not have been wise enough to ensure that I had roving on hand? (I have rectified that problem since.)

While I haven't had as much time as I'd like to play with this (most of the little fiber time I've had has been devoted to working on Rick's socks, which, I am pleased to report, are almost done), I had to at least try.
Isn't the roving a gorgeous color? Isn't the spindle pretty?

Can you tell I'm trying to distract you from the first attempts there? Can't fool you. Here's a closer shot, just in the interests in exposing myself to the world.
I'll get better, I promise. I'm having fun, though!

Of course, I'll be having more fun when tonight's party is done. I've been cooking, almost straight through, since yesterday morning. I made granola to give people as gifts:
Most of what I've been cooking is part of the traditional (read: set in stone) menu that Rick's family has been cooking for Christmas eve lo these many years. The only thing I've changed is to axe the head cheese. I really dislike aspic a lot. Other than that, though, it's pickled herring, which Rick makes.
Isn't it pretty? While I'm not necessarily fond of the fish, the veggies are quite yummy (although we have to warn people every year not to eat the horseradish root he puts in there; it'll take the top of your head off). I made pickled red cabbage (note the emphasis on vinegar here; I can only imagine what things had to come out of storage for this meal in traditional Scandinavia). And rod grod (imagine umlauts over those vowels, if you please), which is a berry pudding. Also cucumbers in vinegar. And meatballs. Five pounds of meat's worth of meatballs. My lovely stove is my workhorse at times like these. Give her a hand.
(The rod grod is cooking there.) And I made the braided cardamom bread that we have for Christmas morning.
The rest of tonight's dinner is boiled red potatoes (to serve with the herring; a man on NPR observed the other day that, the way you serve these traditional foods with other things to cover them up, as well as with liquor and beer, it's as if they're ashamed of the way they taste -- I laughed all the way home) ham, and rye bread, and cheese, and then butter cookies and whipped cream with the rod grod. There's aqvavit (to be drunk in shots with the pickled herring; I wonder why?), and Rick makes glogg, which I have to admit I adore. He makes extra every year, and we spend the next week microwaving a mug now and then in the evening. (It's red wine and port, mulled with oranges, almonds, raisins, cloves, cinnamon, and cardamom pods, for those who are not so lucky as to have married a man of Danish extraction.)

I'll probably be offline tomorrow. If, indeed, I finish the last inch of Rick's socks and weave the ends in, then my plan for tomorrow is to spend the day playing with my new spindle (I swung by The Black Sheep on my way home from errands and got a bit of extra roving; it's not exciting, but it'll do to practice until I get the good stuff -- more on that in another post). Glade jul; a toast to you all!

Happy Solstice

We just got back from a Solstice celebration at the Unitarian Fellowship that a friend of mine belongs to. We go there every year for Winter Solstice, and they always have a wonderful ritual, followed by bread and soup. This year's celebration was focused on opening to grace. As we celebrated and waited for the moment to light this year's fire, it occurred to me just how many opportunities I have been offered this past year to open to grace, and how very hard it can be to do that sometimes. For me, in particular, it is hard to accept the help and support of other people, and yet it is exactly that support that has gotten me through some difficult times. This includes all of the kind words and packages and emails that everyone sent me when I was having a hard time this fall, and was feeling rather sad and disconnected. It really meant a lot to me and it helped me to dig out of that dark place, and yet it's something that I have trouble both asking for and accepting. But being open to that truly is a way to see and be part of that bigger thing that we could call grace.

One part of the ritual every year is to pick a word out of a bowl. The joke among people who have been doing this for a while is that, while you may not like the word you pull out of the bowl, it's always the word that you need. I have found this to be true in the past, and this year, my word was Abundance. Talk about having to really think about the many many ways that grace has been in abundance for me this year. It's so easy to focus on the difficult things that I've faced, and sometimes it does help to just acknowledge that there have been hard times, and that I've made it through. But of course, a large part of the reason that I've made it through is precisely because of that abundance of grace. Because it's hasn't been "I" making it through, it's been "we", whatever "we" may consist of at a particular moment. In a culture that fetishizes independence and the ability to go it alone, acknowledging that we don't, and that we don't have to, is in itself a form of grace. We are stronger for being "we".

Being open to grace, to me, also means paying attention to those small gifts that come our way that would be so easy to miss. It's a special form of concentration. Buddhists whom I know would say that it's that state of ongoing awareness that is cultivated through quieter meditative practices. It's noticing the Random Acts of Kindness that Sheri has been encouraging through her blog; we can offer them, but it takes an equal amount of awareness to see when they're happening to us. For me, and maybe for many people brought up in a culture which tells us to go out there and get 'em, it's easier to do those acts than it is to accept them gracefully. Maybe that's my practice for this year: the grateful acceptance of those moments of grace.

Tomorrow: pickled herring and spindles. Do I have you on the edges of your seats?

All quiet

in blogland. People must be as swamped as I, as posts are appearing less frequently, and comments aren't quite so copious as usual. I feel the same way; like I don't quite know what to say that isn't, "Still knitting Christmas socks. Still haven't quite finished the shopping. Still avoiding the mall like death." That would be the short of it.

The long of it is that I've just finished the foot on the second of Rick's socks; I might have been farther along if I hadn't tempted the Knitting Fates by declaring that these socks were well in hand, and I that I was pretty sure I'd be able to finish them by Christmas without breaking a sweat. So said I.

Then I merrily knitted along on the first sock until I thought I was through about half my skein, put it on a piece of scrap yarn, and for kicks, asked Rick to try it on. Turns out that, large as Rick's feet are, they are not quite so large in the real world as they are in my imagination. (I should say here that, in spite of all of the griping about the size of Rick's feet, I think that it is better that they are large than not. After all, without relatively sizable feet, a man who is 6'6" might find himself blowing over in high winds, and we wouldn't want that.) In fact, the socks were about an inch longer than his actual feet. Which is enough longer that there is no fudging or getting around it: these socks were too darned long. Simultaneously cursing my imagination and praising myself for not have cast the sock off, I ripped back to just before the heel, picked up the instep stitches and the heel stitches, and started turning the heel again. I was thinking so hard about whether to use the same heel pattern I'd been using (from IK Summer 2007, generic toe-up), or whether to try something that I was thinking should work and which made more sense to me (more on that later), that I was several rows into the short row section before it occurred to me that the whole point of ripping back had been to make the foot shorter, and by stopping just before the heel, I hadn't actually removed any length from the foot.

I ripped again. And I made darned sure that I took an inch out of the foot while I was at it. Then I started the heel again. Now, the IK pattern involved backwards yarn-overs, and the knitting and purling of three stitches together in the second half of the heel. As I was knitting it the first time, I kept thinking, "Surely I've seen a simpler way out there. This seems like more work than I want to do. Haven't I read about wrapping stitches, and knitting the wraps with the stitches or something like that?" Of course, I was far too lazy to go and search for such a reference, so I decided to wing it. As I wung it, I thought, "Someone on the blog is going to have a really good reason for me why I shouldn't be doing this, and by the time I ask, it'll be too late. Ah, well. Tra la la." (Clearly, the end of the semester has affected me in interesting and unexpected ways, not the least of which is the manifestation of a new carefree knitting attitude.)

So, in the first half of the heel, I knitted to the last stitch, wrapped that stitch, put it back on the left needle, turned and purled back to the last stitch, wrapped and turned, and kept on like that until I had about 10 stitches left. Then I knitted to the first wrapped stitch, knitted it together with its wrap and turned, purled back to the first wrapped stitch, purled it together with its wrap, and turned. It certainly seems to have created a heel, although the bits where stitches were worked with their wraps is not as neat as I'd like. On the other hand, they're no worse than the k3tog/p3togs from the other pattern. So. Here's your chance to collectively gasp and tell me why no knitter with half a brain would do this to an unsuspecting, defenseless heel whut never done nothin' to no-one. (Seriously, though, opinions and input are welcome.)

I've got the first sock back to where it was (and even a bit higher with the same amount of yarn, due to the shorter foot), and I've gotten through the foot of the second sock. Here's the top, with the k2p1 ribbing, and the little random cables on the side.
Here's the whole thing (forgive the post-daylight kitchen photos).
Not too bad. The heel's a bit pokey in the back, but that doesn't show on Rick's foot (tried it on again before starting the second, to be sure). Once these are done, I can do some knitting for me!

Meanwhile, I have an iPod question for those of you who use them. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to make it mark my place when I go from an audiobook to a podcast and back again. So, if I'm listening to World Without End and decide that I need a break from medieval England and listen to Cast On, and then try to go back to World Without End, it starts all over again at the beginning. And let me tell you, with a 45-hour audiobook, it is inadvisable to start at the beginning every single time I listen. Is this inherent to iPods, or is this just me? Advice would be much appreciated!

I'm too sexy for my grades

That's what I was singing, fairly merrily, at 10:00 this morning as I marched into the last meeting of the semester, having just filed the grades for all of my classes and sent off the paper that my co-author and I have been struggling with for months.

This was not particularly nice, since no-one else in that meeting had filed yet, but since it's the first thing that I've gotten done in any semblance of good time this semester, I figured I deserved a moment of glee. Don't you think?

Especially since yesterday was awful. Worse yet, I knew it would be awful, as I'd scheduled all of the meetings that needed to happen to deal, at least marginally, with all of the junk from the week before. I'd fretted about the meetings all weekend. I'd fretted so hard that I broke out like a high school student on the morning of the prom. I lost quite a lot of sleep. I did, however, manage to take a break from all of that for a short space on Sunday afternoon. The girls had a piano recital, at which Younger Daughter flat-out refused to play (more on that in another post), we had a lovely dinner at a local Indian restaurant with good friends, and then we picked up some wood for the fireplace and came home to bring the tree in and decorate it. The girls put on pjs, Rick got out his trombone (!!), and we lit a fire and relaxed. It was lovely.

I think the girls were a bit shocked by the trombone (they've never heard him play).
Trombones are loud. But they went back to tree decorating merrily, and had a lot of fun finding the ornaments they've made in the past and hanging them on the tree (I remember doing the same thing at their age).
I know, it's not a pine tree. Years ago, it started to really bother me to put our tree out on the curb, dead and denuded, after Christmas was over (I readily acknowledge that this is a weird attitude in a woman who will eat meat, but there it is). So Rick and I bought a pine tree in a big huge pot, which lived outside except for a few weeks during the holidays, which struck me as a perfect solution. Until we moved from the Bay Area (which is cold enough in the winter to make pines happy) to North County (which most definitely is not). And our pine tree stopped being so happy during the off-season. And, as much as I don't mind sacrificing a bit for the sake of a good tree, a brown Christmas tree which is losing all of its needles is just not festive.

At about the same time, our leanings towards some of the philosophical tenets of Buddhism became stronger, and a bodhi tree seemed appropriate, so we acquired a lovely ficus with very dark green leaves. It lives happily on the back patio all year long, and usually comes in on Bodhi Day (in early December), but we missed the date this year. However, it is now inside and decorated.

So there it is, glowing merrily by the fireplace. I really needed that evening of peace to face yesterday's meetings, which were awkward and painful. Rick did an amazing job of caretaking during the day. I came back from the two meetings to find an email from him which offered to come right away to take me off-campus for lunch. I said YES. Later in the afternoon, we all met at the dentist's office for a cleaning, and when he and the girls were all done, and I was still sitting in my chair waiting for someone to come see me (they'd trapped me in the back wearing one of those lovely paper bibs before deserting me for other patients), Rick went to the front desk and got me rescheduled for weeks away from now and took me home and fed me dinner and let me grade. It just doesn't get better than that.

And now that's all done, and there's a plan for moving forward which can't go drastically awry for at least a month, and my grades are filed, and I have not a single thing scheduled for tomorrow. That's not to say that there's nothing to be done. I need to get pjs for the girls for their traditional Christmas Eve present, and pick up some stocking things (Santa fills stockings in our house), and mail one box. But it's on my time, and if I want to go for the whole day without talking to anyone but Rick and the girls, I can do that. I'm so excited, I can't stand it (here's where my essential introverted nature comes out). A whole day ALONE.

I know that this has been a knitting-shy post. It's not for lack of knitting. I've turned the heel on the first of Rick's socks and am several inches up the leg. I'll post pictures tomorrow. I think that, very soon, I will put the sock on a piece of scrap yarn and start the other sock, so that I can try to make them as long as possible with the yarn that I have. This is another time when a very accurate kitchen scale would be nice. I could just knit until only half of the yarn is left and then start the next one. But my scale isn't so hot (something to pick up at after-Christmas sales?), so I must create a workaround with what I've got, and I think this'll do the trick. I'm pretty happy with them; I'm doing a k2 p1 rib, with a small cable at each side, and it's coming out quite nicely in the Trekking. You all will have to tell me what you think when I post pictures tomorrow.

How are you all doing with holiday prep? Am I the only one who's feeling a bit behind? Also, tomorrow, I will have an iPod question for those of you who use them, so be prepared to weigh in and help a newby!