Pocahontas County Fare

CS 101: Classroom Droop Mountain

2012-01-30T08:00:00.000-05:00

I was excited to read this last week: Udacity and the future of online universities by Felix Salmon. Speaking of Sebastian Thrun, Salmon writes:

... It started as a way of putting his Stanford course online--he was going to teach the whole thing, for free, to anybody in the world who wanted it. With quizzes and grades and a final certificate, in parallel with the in-person course he was giving his Stanford undergrad students. He sent out one email to announce the class, and from that one email there was ultimately an enrollment of 160,000 students....
Thrun was eloquent on the subject of how he realized that he had been running "weeder" classes, designed to be tough and make students fail and make himself, the professor, look good. Going forwards, he said, he wanted to learn from Khan Academy and build courses designed to make as many students as possible succeed--by revisiting classes and tests as many times as necessary until they really master the material.
.... he concluded that "I can't teach at Stanford again." He's given up his tenure at Stanford, and he's started a new online university called Udacity. He wants to enroll 500,000 students for his first course, on how to build a search engine--and of course it's all going to be free.

Here's the Website for the Introduction to Artificial Intelligence class that started it all, and here's the Udacity site, which is preparing to offer two more computer classes free on the Web. They say:

We believe university-level education can be both high quality and low cost. Using the economics of the Internet, we've connected some of the greatest teachers to hundreds of thousands of students all over the world.

I've signed up for "CS 101: Building a Search Engine" to learn Python. Aside from my FORTRAN course in 1976, everything I've ever learned about computers has been self-taught and ad hoc. I'd love to try it in a structured environment. (I enjoyed my FORTRAN course, but the Computer Science department at my alma mater made it really clear they didn't want a bunch of ladies running around their nice clean building.) Classes start February 20!

An End to Peaches

2012-01-29T10:00:00.000-05:00

2011 was a sadly inauspicious year for trees on our ridge. The stag-horn sumac trees did not fare well in the summer, and this happened in the spring. This poor peach tree has been struggling for years, but every once in a while it would produce a small crop of flavorful (gnarly-looking) fruit. This spring, the wind took it down. I'm saving the last freezer-bag of peach pie filling for a special occasion.

Feature-Rich Rambouillet Wool Socks

2012-01-28T10:00:00.000-05:00

Here's my most recent knitting--socks from my crock-pot-dyed, hand-spun Rambouillet fleece. Several years ago, I decided that this neppy, lumpy wool was not a failure, but an interesting exercise in color and texture: It's Not a Nep, It's a Feature. I tried out a few interesting rib and cable patterns, but they lost all definition in this "highly-textured" yarn, so in the end, it was plain old "Knit 2, Purl 2" ribbing. It was a fun, mindless knit, and these soft, soft socks are a treat to wear.

New USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map

2012-01-27T15:44:00.000-05:00

This week the USDA Agricultural Research Service released its new Plant Hardiness Zone Map. Strangely, I discovered this, not through the agriculture and gardening sites I follow, but through Mother Jones magazine's Blue Marble Blog. Julia Whitty points out:

The new map is interactive, which is cool, and based on a much finer data scale than the old one, which is great. And guess what. It shows that things are getting warmer. The USDA managed to pretty much bury that fact in Bureaucratese in their press release...Compared to the 1990 version, zone boundaries in this edition of the map have shifted in many areas. The new map is generally one 5-degree Fahrenheit half-zone warmer than the previous map throughout much of the United States. This is mostly a result of using temperature data from a longer and more recent time period; the new map uses data measured at weather stations during the 30-year period 1976-2005. In contrast, the 1990 map was based on temperature data from only a 13-year period of 1974-1986.

The interactive USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map lets you select a state and "zoom in" to see surprisingly fine-grained detail. I've already zoomed in on every place I've ever tried to garden.

Finding a WiFi Adapter for a New Linux Box

2012-01-26T08:30:00.000-05:00

Given the mysterious boot failures of the last few weeks, I need regular and reliable access to my laptop. Yet since the Mac Mini failed last summer, the laptop has been commandeered for streaming video in the living room. It seems the time had come for (the cheapest possible) Mac Mini replacement. I found a refurbished desktop without an OS at Geeks.com, and while it had an Ethernet adapter, I thought I'd like to have wireless capability. (There's just no convenient way to run Ethernet cables between the "office" and the living room.)

Now, I knew installing wireless drivers in Linux has a painful history, so I the first thing I did was check out what wireless devices are Linux-compatible.

I looked up all sorts of wireless adapter cards and USB adapters, and got very confused. However, Geeks.com provides information I haven't seen anywhere else: For each Wireless adapter, it lists what operating systems the device will work with. I picked out a Linux-compatible one and made my order.

I was able to install Debian testing using a netinstall CD and the Ethernet connection, and when that was finished, I modified the /etc/apt/sources.list to include the contrib and non-free sources. (I always do that anyway.) Then, of course, at the command line, I typed aptitude update

From there Debian Wiki had everything I needed to know to go wireless. The wireless USB adapter had the RT3070 chip, so that meant I needed the rt2800usb driver. The driver is installed by aptitude install firmware-ralink Because I'd already installed the KDE desktop environment, there was a WiFi interface waiting for me. It detected the wireless device and set things up without a hitch. (I had to give it my password, that's all.) If it had not been that simple, the Debian Wiki had WiFi--How To Use. (I read it anyway, and found it informative.)

It was quite a treat to have something work easily and as expected.

Pastel Pier Glass Socks

2012-01-25T14:38:00.000-05:00

Here's another pair of socks from 2011, using oddities from my vintage yarn collection. This yarn is the same stuff I used for Heraldic Socks-- a "baby weight," pastel called "Peter Pan by Wendy." The fiber content is 55% nylon, 45% acrylic. To my surprise, the white Heraldic Socks are quite comfortable (so many acrylics make one's feet sweat miserably), and they are refreshingly easy to wash.

I used Barbara Walker's Pier Glass Pattern from A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, p. 148. The pattern looks complicated, but it's just a nice, fancy ribbing that's interesting to knit, but not so "interesting" that you get totally confused. (At least, I didn't get confused, and I'm sometimes rather...inattentive.)

JSTOR Limited Free Access for Unmoored Scholars

2012-01-24T08:00:00.000-05:00

jstor opens limited free access option non-subscribing scholars | Inside Higher Ed: "The depletion of the traditional professoriate has produced a new demographic of unmoored scholars who might not have “the consistency of access that they want,” says Heidi McGregor, a spokeswoman for JSTOR. The goal of Register & Read would be to better serve that population — as well as others that the organization might not have even known about."

Good news for us "unmoored scholars." The institutions that employ me as an adjunct faculty member don't subscribe to JSTOR.

'via Blog this'

Academic Badges and GarageBand E-Books

2012-01-23T08:00:00.000-05:00

As part of the "adjunct army" that teaches a great chunk of the post-secondary academic courses, I'm painfully conscious of the high costs of textbooks and tuition, without being able to do much about it beyond observe the news. Here's a recent bid to "revolutionize" textbook publishing:

Apple to announce tools, platform to "digitally destroy" textbook publishing: "MacInnis sees Apple as possibly up-ending the traditional print publishing model for the low-end, where basic information has for many years remained locked behind high textbook prices. Apple can "kick up dust with the education market," which could then create visibility for platforms like Inkling. This could then serve as a sort of professional Logic-type tool for interactive textbook creation complement to Apple's "GarageBand for e-books." "There will be a spectrum of tools and consumers, and we will continue to fit on that spectrum," MacInnis opined. "I don't know if the publishing industry will react to it with fear or enthusiasm.""

Here's more about it from Open Culture: The best free cultural & educational media on the web. They've incorporated Apple's offerings into their aggregation of free online courses: Apple Releases Free iTunesU App & Enhanced University Courses (Plus Textbooks).

And this article suggests that college curricula and diplomas themselves may be on the way out:

College 2.0: Badges Earned Online Pose Challenge to Traditional College Diplomas | The Chronicle of Higher Education: "The spread of a seemingly playful alternative to traditional diplomas, inspired by Boy Scout achievement patches and video-game power-ups, suggests that the standard certification system no longer works in today's fast-changing job market. Educational upstarts across the Web are adopting systems of "badges" to certify skills and abilities. If scouting focuses on outdoorsy skills like tying knots, these badges denote areas employers might look for, like mentorship or digital video editing. Many of the new digital badges are easy to attain--intentionally so--to keep students motivated, while others signal mastery of fine-grained skills that are not formally recognized in a traditional classroom."

Digitization Policies for the Web

2012-01-23T07:30:00.000-05:00

Apropos of the SOPA/PIPA controversy last week, I've revised my short paper on digital copyright issues written for a local history project a few years ago. The website where it was posted has since been shut down, so I'm re-posting it here for my own reference. Even without SOPA/PIPA, modern copyright law has a stifling effect on preserving genealogy and local history, while profiting no one. "Orphan works" still under copyright, are being lost because they cannot legally be curated or shared on the Internet.

Pocahontas County Historic Preservation Project: A First Draft of Digitization Policies

Goals of the Digitization Project

To facilitate preservation of historic materials through digitization.
To make freely available as much material as possible, over the web and through local libraries, museums, and historic sites.
To behave in a scholarly, courteous, and responsible manner to those who create or donate historic materials and to those who wish to access such material for noncommercial purposes. This must include acting in accordance with copyright, property, and privacy laws.

Digitization has tremendous potential to enhance preservation of historic materials, and to make all types of information available to interested parties around the world at little cost. However, it also presents novel problems in intellectual property rights. Who owns the rights to reproduce materials, and what may be done with the digital copies? There have been many changes in intellectual property rights law in the last 20 years, and there are few simple, straightforward answers to these questions.

I believe there are some cases in which we can use materials without fear of infringing anyone's rights.

Text and photographs published prior to January 1, 1923 are considered in the public domain. At least one item of interest to our project, William T. Price's Historical Sketches of Pocahontas County, has been scanned by the Google Books Project, and is freely available at their website in pdf and ascii text files.
Works of the United States Government, and other government-generated writings, as described by the West Virginia Division of Culture and History.
Any work that was neither published nor registered as of Jan. 1, 1978, and whose author died before 1933 entered the public domain on Jan. 1, 2003, unless it was published on or before Dec. 31, 2002. (U.S. Copyright Office, see passage in Appendix.)
Unpublished works that have been donated, along with their copyrights, to the Historical Society, the Genealogy group, or the Library system. (See the "Deed of Gift" references in the Appendix.) For example, if a diary and some family snapshots are donated by the creator's heir, along with explicit permission to share and reproduce, we may legally digitize and post these on the Web site.
Our own photographs of three-dimensional artifacts, with the permission of the artifact owner.
Descriptions of the materials in our local collections, using the Archon archive content management system to list our holdings on the Web, even where we cannot find the copyright owner or obtain permission. We can display excerpts of text or images as long as we comply with the Fair Use Doctrine. (Described by the Copyright Office, see Appendix.)
Digital copies of unpublished works under copyright protection can be made (up to three copies) by a library for preservation purposes, but they cannot be posted on the Internet, or otherwise displayed or distributed. (Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Code, see Appendix for a link.)

Items that may not be available for digitization or publication on a Web site include:

Studio and professional photographs where the photographer was still living as of January 1, 1933. The person who commissioned the photo did not get copyrights at purchase. These remained with the photographer, unless explicitly surrendered.
Photographs and papers found and donated to the Historical Society. Although these organizations have legal ownership of the physical objects, copyright does not automatically convey with the object.
Published materials under copyright protection where the copyright holder is unidentifiable, unavailable, or unwilling to give permission for digitization.

To proceed with the digitization project, we need to identify which materials we have legal right to digitize, obtain permission to use materials where necessary, and determine how we want to share our own materials.

We need to identify copyright holders for materials already in possession of the Historical Society, the Pearl Buck Birthplace, and the libraries. Where this is known, we can request permission to digitize and share materials.
As we gain access to new materials, we need to get permission in writing to digitize and share the materials. There are several "Deed of Gift" templates available for us to use in developing our own permission form. (See "Deed of Gift" in Appendix.) It will be important to make sure this form does not sound ominous, intimidating, or excessively technical, lest it have a "wet blanket" effect on offers of information.
We need to spell out our copyright for the Web site. I suggest a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial license, but this will only apply to materials where we own the copyright (for example, things the Historic Preservation Officer writes while "on the clock;" new photographs of historic locations and objects taken specifically for the digitization project, etc.) Where we use materials by permission with attribution, we have no authority to grant permission to another party.
The possibility of print publications such as books, calendars, and recordings has been discussed, especially as a form of fund raising for the support of the various institutions involved. Copyright issues must be considered especially carefully for such projects, as they are more carefully examined in for-profit situations.

Appendix: Quotations From Pertinent Sources

Copyright Office On Protection of Digital Rights

Pertinent information from the United States Copyright Office Frequently Asked Questions:

It is illegal for anyone to violate any of the rights provided by the copyright law to the owner of copyright. These rights, however, are not unlimited in scope. Sections 107 through 121 of the 1976 Copyright Act establish limitations on these rights....One major limitation is the doctrine of "fair use," which is given a statutory basis in section 107 of the 1976 Copyright Act....
A party may seek to protect his or her copyrights against unauthorized use by filing a civil lawsuit in federal district court. If you believe that your copyright has been infringed, consult an attorney. In cases of willful infringement for profit, the U.S. Attorney may initiate a criminal investigation....
If you use a copyrighted work without authorization, the owner may be entitled to bring an infringement action against you. There are circumstances under the fair use doctrine where a quote or a sample may be used without permission. However, in cases of doubt, the Copyright Office recommends that permission be obtained....
....Uploading or downloading works protected by copyright without the authority of the copyright owner is an infringement of the copyright owner's exclusive rights of reproduction and/or distribution. Anyone found to have infringed a copyrighted work may be liable for statutory damages up to $30,000 for each work infringed and, if willful infringement is proven by the copyright owner, that amount may be increased up to $150,000 for each work infringed. In addition, an infringer of a work may also be liable for the attorney's fees incurred by the copyright owner to enforce his or her rights.....
....Photocopying shops, photography stores and other photo developing stores are often reluctant to make reproductions of old photographs for fear of violating the copyright law and being sued. These fears are not unreasonable, because copy shops have been sued for reproducing copyrighted works and have been required to pay substantial damages for infringing copyrighted works. The policy established by a shop is a business decision and risk assessment that the business is entitled to make, because the business may face liability if they reproduce a work even if they did not know the work was copyrighted....
....In the case of photographs, it is sometimes difficult to determine who owns the copyright and there may be little or no information about the owner on individual copies. Ownership of a "copy" of a photograph the tangible embodiment of the "work" is distinct from the "work" itself the intangible intellectual property. The owner of the "work" is generally the photographer or, in certain situations, the employer of the photographer. Even if a person hires a photographer to take pictures of a wedding, for example, the photographer will own the copyright in the photographs unless the copyright in the photographs is transferred, in writing and signed by the copyright owner, to another person. The subject of the photograph generally has nothing to do with the ownership of the copyright in the photograph. If the photographer is no longer living, the rights in the photograph are determined by the photographer's will or passed as personal property by the applicable laws of intestate succession.....

Materials In the Public Domain

When U.S. Works Pass Into the Public Domain provides a chart to clarify the rules. The simplest entry indicates that works published prior to January 1, 1923 are in the public domain. Complexity increases from there.

The Copyright Office explains how unpublished works may enter public domain: Certain Unpublished, Unregistered Works Enter Public Domain.

Certain works that were neither published nor registered for copyright as of Jan. 1, 1978, entered the public domain on Jan. 1, 2003, unless the works were published on or before Dec. 31, 2002.
Under the 1909 Copyright Act, works that were neither published nor registered did not enjoy statutory protection, although they were protected under common law in perpetuity as long as they remained unpublished and unregistered. But under section 303 of the 1976 Copyright Act, works that were created but neither published nor registered in the Copyright Office before Jan. 1, 1978, lost their common law protection and acquired a statutory term of protection that was the life of the author plus 50 years, amended in 1998 to life plus 70 years.
As a result of the 1976 Copyright Act, any of the works in question whose author had died over 50 years prior to 1978 would have entered the public domain after Dec. 31, 1977. To provide a reasonable term of copyright protection for these works, and in light of the fact that these works had enjoyed perpetual protection under common law, Congress extended their term by at least 25 more years. Congress also encouraged publication by providing an additional 25 more years, extended in 1998 to 45 more years, of protection if the work was published on or before Dec. 31, 2002.
That first 25-year period expired on Dec. 31, 2002. Any work that was neither published nor registered as of Jan. 1, 1978, and whose author died before 1933 entered the public domain on Jan. 1, 2003, unless it was published on or before Dec. 31, 2002. If the author died in 1933 or later, the work will be protected for 70 years after the author's death, due to the passage of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in 1998.

Fair Use Doctrine

A discussion of the Fair Use Doctrine, by the U.S. Copyright Office

Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered “fair,” such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:

the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of
commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

the nature of the copyrighted work;

amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The distinction between "fair use" and infringement may be unclear
and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission.
The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author's observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.

Privacy and Publicity Issues

Library of Congress Privacy and Publicity Issues:

While copyright protects the copyright holder's property rights in the work or intellectual creation, privacy and publicity rights protect the interests of the person(s) who may be the subject(s) of the work or intellectual creation. Issues pertaining to privacy and publicity may arise when a researcher contemplates the use of letters, diary entries, photographs or reportage in visual, audio, and print formats found in library collections. Because two or more people are often involved in the work (e.g., photographer and subject, interviewer and interviewee) and because of the ease with which various media in digital format can be reused, photographs, audio files, and motion pictures represent materials in which issues of privacy and publicity emerge with some frequency....
While copyright is a federally protected right under the United States Copyright Act, with statutorily described fair use defenses against charges of copyright infringement, neither privacy nor publicity rights are the subject of federal law. Note also that while fair use is a defense to copyright infringement, fair use is not a defense to claims of violation of privacy or publicity rights. Privacy and publicity rights are the subject of state laws. What may be permitted in one state may not be permitted in another. Note also that related causes of action may be pursued under the federal Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. P 1125 (a), for example, for unauthorized uses of a person's identity in order to create a false endorsement.
While an individual's right to privacy generally ends when the individual dies, publicity rights associated with the commercial value connected with an individual's name, image or voice may continue. For example, many estates or representatives of famous authors, musicians, actors, photographers, politicians, sports figures, celebrities, and other public figures continue to control and license the uses of those figures' names, likenesses, etc.

How Libraries Manage Copyright Issues Pertaining to Their Digital Collections

Library of Congress

How the Library of Congress handles copyright issues on its Web site, as explained by the United States Copyright Office FAQ's:

I saw an image on the Library of Congress website that I would like to use. Do I need to obtain permission?
With few exceptions, the Library of Congress does not own copyright in the materials in its collections and does not grant or deny permission to use the content mounted on its website. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item from the Library's collections and for securing any necessary permissions rests with persons desiring to use the item. To the greatest extent possible, the Library attempts to provide any known rights information about its collections. Such information can be found in the "Copyright and Other Restrictions" statements on each American Memory online collection homepage. If the image is not part of the American Memory collections, contact the Library custodial division to which the image is credited. Bibliographic records and finding aids available in each custodial division include information that may assist in assessing the copyright status. Search our catalogs through the Library's Online Catalog. To access information from the Library's reading rooms, go to Research Centers.

Library of Congress "Legal" Page

Whenever possible, the Library of Congress provides factual information about copyright owners and related matters in the catalog records, finding aids and other texts that accompany collections. As a publicly supported institution, the Library generally does not own rights in its collections. Therefore, it does not charge permission fees for use of such material and generally does not grant or deny permission to publish or otherwise distribute material in its collections. Permission and possible fees may be required from the copyright owner independently of the Library. It is the researcher's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in the Library's collections. Transmission or reproduction of protected items beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Researchers must make their own assessments of rights in light of their intended use.
If you have any more information about an item you've seen on our website or if you are the copyright owner and believe our website has not properly attributed your work to you or has used it without permission, we want to hear from you. Please contact OGC@loc.gov with your contact information and a link to the relevant content.

West Virginia University Libraries

How West Virginia University University Library regulates use of its archives, physical archives: Rules for the Use of Library Materials in the West Virginia and Regional History Collection

Some materials in the WVRHC are protected by copyright laws and other restrictions. The researcher assumes all responsibility for possible infringement of copyright and/or other literary, artistic, property or privacy rights in the act of copying or in the subsequent use of the materials copied....The reproduction of any collection in its entirety is prohibited.
Any publication, exhibition, or other public use of materials reproduced must properly credit the source from which a copy is made. The basic credit line is "West Virginia and Regional History Collection, West Virginia University Libraries"....Researchers are not permitted to photograph any materials in the WVRHC. To order photographs, users may inquire at the reference desk about policies, forms and fees.

West Virginia History Online Digital Collections has rules that offer us a model on proper usage: Notes on Rights and Reproductions. Their West Virginia History OnView: Photographs From the West Virginia & Regional History Collection is the sort of online archive we hope to produce.

West Virginia History OnLine digital resources are available for use in research, teaching, and private study only. These materials may NOT be used for publication or exhibition, downloaded and placed on another server where they can be publicly accessed, or utilized in any other public manner without the express written permission of the West Virginia and Regional History Collection. Such permission may be granted only by a curator of the WV&RHC or by the Dean of WVU Libraries. Any reproduction of materials from this site must properly credit the source of the materials. For archives and manuscripts, the proper credit line includes the full name of the collection, plus "West Virginia and Regional History Collection, West Virginia University Libraries." For works of art, the proper credit line includes the names of the artist and artwork, plus "West Virginia and Regional History Collection, West Virginia University Libraries."
Some Materials in the WV&RHC and on this web site are protected by copyright laws and other restrictions. The researcher assumes all responsibility for possible infringement of copyright and/or other literary, artistic, property or privacy rights in the act of copying or in the subsequent use of the materials copied.

Deed of Gift Forms

Local history research organizations such as libraries, museums, and historical associations, can protect themselves against inadvertent copyright violations by obtaining permission to display and use material at the time it is donated. If your organization accepts gifts (items), then it needs a Deed of gift form.

Here are two other sources for Deed of Gift formats:

Copyright Concerns For Libraries

There are special rules for libraries and digital copying. Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Code is a graphic presentation of these rules, provided by Copyright advisory network, a site about the latest developments in digital collections and archives.

Modes of Managing Copyright Issues

Online Resources for Further Reading

United States Copyright Office
Fair Use, explained by the U.S. Copyright Office
Rules for the Use of Library Materials in the West Virginia and Regional History Collection
West Virginia History Online Digital Collections
West Virginia History OnView: Photographs From the West Virginia & Regional History Collection
Notes on Rights and Reproductions
A Guide to Deeds of Gift
Copyright advisory network
Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Code--rules especially for libraries
Creative Commons
The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind by James Boyle
The Public Domain--explained by the Copyright Office
DigitalKoans--What Is the Sound of One E-Print Downloading?
WHEN U.S. WORKS PASS INTO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN
Library of Congress Homepage legal issues, including copyright, privacy, and publicity
Intellectual Property Rights Server--Copyright page--provides information about intellectual property law including patent, trademark and copyright. Resources include comprehensive links, general information, space for professionals to publish articles and forums for discussing related issues.
A Look Back at Canarsie, Clouded by Copyright Woes --a case study from the New York Times, describing how Brooklyn Historical Society was unable to give permission to a local historian who wanted to include two photographs from their collection in his forthcoming book.
COPYRIGHTS AND OTHER RIGHTS IN PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGES
A detailed discussion of 20th century photographs, copyright law, and licensing

Burgess Shale--A New (Very Old) Animal

2012-01-22T09:30:00.000-05:00

A New Stalked Filter-Feeder from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale, British Columbia, Canada. 2012. L. J. O'Brien and J.-B. Caron. PLoS ONE 7(1): e29233.

This is a new member of the "Problematica," those strange Cambrian animals not assigned to any known phylum. And because it's published in PLoS ONE, the entire article (including many beautiful photos of fossils and some ecological notes) is freely-available on line. What a treat! Via Paleoblog.

This Weekend's Space Weather

2012-01-21T09:50:00.003-05:00

Popular media coverage made this sound hair-raising: Cosmic Log - Solar blast heading our way, and the video is very cool, is it not? It led me to the video's home, Spaceweather.com's January 19 archive page. The "solar blast" might cause some impressive auroras this weekend.

Mostly, I was excited to find Spaceweather, which directed me to NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center. It's there to check daily, the way I check NOAA National Weather Service forecast.

Flora, For a Change

2012-01-20T14:03:00.005-05:00

Lately, this blog has been heavy computer troubles and sewing project catch-up posts. There's more of both to come. This morning glory from last August is offered for a change of pace. I love the dusty pollen in the corolla.

SOPA and PIPA--Are We All Pirates Now?

2012-01-18T11:19:00.000-05:00

I'm no expert on legislation and the Internet, which is why I'm passing along Ask Slashdot: What Can You Do About SOPA and PIPA?: "The intent of both pieces of legislation is to combat online piracy, giving the Attorney General and the Department of Justice power to block domain name services and demand that links be stripped from sites not involved in piracy. The problem is that the legislation, as written, is vague and overly-broad."

Just Don't Turn It Off....

2012-01-18T08:00:00.000-05:00

My Linux reboot problems continue. If I restart shutdown -r now, I get a variety of boot failures. I've determined there's nothing wrong with my grub2 and config files, the whole /boot directory and everything in it is fine. If I leave the computer alone for at least half an hour, I can turn it on, and boot successfully from /dev/sda1. Any less time, and every version of grub, SuperGrub, rescue disk, live Linux CD, whatever I try reports it cannot read any files. Hardware problem, or software, or a combination of the two? I really don't know. For the moment, I'm just leaving it turned on all the time, because sleep modes give other problems. If I need to turn it off, I'll try to leave it off overnight.

This is really unsatisfactory. Here's some unsatisfying but perhaps informative information I've found about similar Linux troubles.

The Analysis of Drive Issues: This page has been designed to help with the analysis of drive problems, and often to recommend what steps to take.

SATA disks resets in a md setup:

Setup:
------
The system is amd64bit running Debian unstable stock with kernel 2.6.29
(Debian package). full dmesg is attached
I have 2 250GB disks (/dev/sda, /dev/sdb) that I used to assemble a
md array (/dev/md0)

Homework:
---------
Please note that the two disk are tested via smart long selftest
and via $dd bs=256M if=/dev/sd? of=/dev/null without any problem.
I researched in web and followed advice:
I have checked / exchanged cables
I disabled smartd.

The actual Problem:
-------------------
Then I start the following stress test. From the other disks of the machine
/dev/hda, /dev/hdb, /dev/sdc I start copying (via rsync) to /dev/md0 to a
newly formatted ext3 filesystem.

Everything goes fine for a while and then the system freezes
[Error messages deleted--they look much like my errors]
and my filesystem is dead. /dev/sdb is deleted from /dev. I have to reboot
and even then Linux can't find the ata2 /dev/sdb.
I have to remove power for 1-2 min for the disk to become accessible again.

Do you think the disk is bad or something?

The answer he eventually gets is that it's a kernel bug, which has since been fixed.

SATA functionality and performance with OMAPL-138: In this case the writer is working with a board that seems to have problems accessing SATA drives. The answers he gets suggest looking at different kernels and checking SATA cables.
ata3: COMRESET failed (errno=-16):

At bootup I end up in busybox and I see the following message on the top of the screen "Gave up waiting for root device"
Actually I think that my hard drive "falls asleep" just after leaving grub. When I'm in the busybox I need to unplug my hard drive (serial ata) and to plug it again so that I can hear that it's restarting. After doing that I type exit in the busybox and the boot process restarts normally.
This turns out to be a kernel bug which has been fixed.
Fails to find boot device in Intel D945Gnt: These boot failures resemble mine; also a kernel bug which has been fixed.

Can someone explain how to perform this workaround? I've tried this fix with no success:

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

you will see some lines like : 

title  Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.26-1-686
root  (hd0,0)
kernel  /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-1-686 root=/dev/sda1 ro quiet
initrd  /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-1-686

add rootdelay=90 after quiet

This person had success with the rootdelay=90 solution: Cold boots fine, but get 'Gave up waiting for root device' on reboot.

Debian Bug report logs - #649563 linux-image-3.1.0-1-amd64 can't load initial ramdisk anymore:

after upgrading wheezy to linux-image-3.1.0-1-amd64, grub complains:

Loading initial ramdisk ...
error: couldn't read file.

Later the kernel panics.

This one is also solved by a kernel upgrade.

Here are some more rescue disks I've burned and tried.

Sewing Summer Shirts

2012-01-17T09:00:00.000-05:00

The last 10 years or so, I've tried all sorts of alterations on this (out-of-print) pattern, Kwik-Sew K2953, alterations that almost worked, but not quite. Last year, I started over, and made the full bust adjustment, then rotating the resulting side dart to the shoulder, where I gathered (or pleated) the extra fullness at the yoke seam.

I found that the two rayon shirts (the red one and the white and gray print) fit and looked very nice. The black and green plaid cotton shirt and this white and navy window pane check below are less satisfactory. I think the difference lies in the drape and "hand" of the fabrics. The crisper cotton pulls and puffs, and doesn't look flattering or feel comfortable.

Because these garments were testers, and made of ravel-y fabric remnants, I used a serger shortcut on the collars and cuffs. I believe they may last longer than conventionally-applied shirt collars.

After a little practice, I'm able to manage the collar stand without obvious unevenness. I probably will keep making menswear collar and cuff details on firmer woven shirt fabric, but this quick and dirty finish has its benefits.

What will we do about coal’s ‘crisis in the making’? « Coal Tattoo

2012-01-17T08:00:00.000-05:00

What will we do about coal’s ‘crisis in the making’? « Coal Tattoo: "As a society, we do not plan well for economic transitions; nor do we tend to plan for the long term. Our elected officials have a vested interest in helping businesses and industries that are here now, not imagining future businesses and industries. Coal companies focus only on this year’s profits. Unions protect current members’ jobs. Planning the future of Boone County is too important to leave up to the president of the West Virginia Coal Association, the CEO of Alpha Natural Resources, the president of the United Mine Workers, or even government officials like Sen. Manchin and Gov. Tomblin."

'via Blog this'

2011--My Year of Full-Bust Alterations and Lounge Wear

2012-01-16T14:51:00.001-05:00

My 2011 garment sewing adventures were not great blog fodder. They involved revisiting my pattern collection and trying the full-bust alteration on previously unsuccessful blouse, shirt, and jacket patterns. Much brown wrapping paper was used for pattern copies, there was much cutting and taping, and many muslins were made and discarded.

While it was an instructive process (and one that is not yet complete--I still have a couple of patterns to try once more), I have little to share here for my trouble beyond an excellent Web resource: Debbie Cook's Stitches and Seams Tutorials. She demonstrates the alteration on princess seams, empire waist garments, dolman sleeves, and other alteration-resistant styles. As if that weren't enough, many of her blog posts show her full bust alteration process, so we can watch the way she solves a variety of problems.

I did do some utilitarian sewing--mainly lounge-wear and undergarments. I made four of these sport bras from an out-of-print "Stretch and Sew" pattern I've used for at least 10 years. This is the first time I've made these since I got the serger, and I was quite pleased with the way the serger inserted the miles of elastic that go into each of these items. It's a quicker and better-looking edge finish than I've gotten in the past.

I made a summer version of the Kwik-Sew robe pattern I altered and tried in January. It's the fuchsia garment on the clothesline below. It uses some silk noil I'd crumple-dyed several years ago, and it's trimmed with some grab-bag lace remnants. The nubby silk noil is surprisingly comfortable in hot weather.

The light blue nylon knit below was made from a pattern in Kwik-Sew's "Beautiful Lingerie". It's a nice pattern, easy to sew and fun to embellish, but I've discovered that a yoke that ends above the bust is...well...not a great look for me.

The purple stretch lace gown on the right is simply a knee-length tee shirt, and this works very well for nightgowns out of stretchy fabrics like thermal knits and cotton interlock. This navy blue nylon tricot seemed to be as stretchy as the knits I've used before, but in this style it seems a little too snug, or perhaps too body-hugging. I have several nylon tricot remnants I'd like to use, but I'll continue looking for a different gown pattern.

Tree Year 2011 Recap: Sumac Season

2012-01-15T13:47:00.002-05:00

My blogging habit crashed and burned last year, but I continued to take sumac pictures for Tree Year 2011, at least until summer's dry weather killed the small trees I was photographing.

I waited until the end of April to see the buds relax and swell.

These leaves were unfolding on May 21.

By June, most of the trees were leafy, although some new shoots were still growing.

The inflorescences are not as pretty as the red winter fruiting bodies. This is full bloom on June 21.

I had never looked close at sumac inflorescences before.

And then, they all dried up and died--the small, reachable sumacs, that is. Around here, sumacs are adventitious woody shrubs that pop up in old fields and die back after a short time. I had hoped for a series of fall foliage colors, like we had in 2004. I was going to finish off the year with this:

When we read Indian Summer in school, the whole concept of "crimson forest" was a mythical thing in my mind, like dragons and fairy godmothers. Yes, sometimes a leaf might turn yellow or red, but mostly, they turned brown and blew away.

Along the line of smoky hills
The crimson forest stands,
And all the day the blue-jay calls
Throughout the autumn lands.

Now by the brook the maple leans
With all his glory spread,
And all the sumachs on the hills
Have turned their green to red.

Sometimes, I knew, trees could blow away. The Kansas part of "The Wizard of Oz" was all too real--I was in high school before I could bear to watch it on TV. But "sumachs on the hills...turned their green to red" was some sort of literary conceit. Boy did I get a surprise when I moved "back East." I believe sumac sometimes glows in the dark come autumn.

Wind Turbine Mufflers

2012-01-14T12:00:00.000-05:00

Mineral County wind farm owner seeks to reduce noise - News - The Charleston Gazette - West Virginia News and Sports -: "KEYSER, W.Va. -- The owner of a wind farm in Mineral County is working to reduce turbine noise after neighbors complained that they can't sleep. Edison Mission Energy has asked the turbine manufacturer to develop a turbine muffler system."

Reset KDE4 Dolphin

2012-01-14T08:00:00.000-05:00

Here's how you reset kde4 dolphin settings:"Just remove settings file and restart dolphin--"

$rm .kde/share/config/dolphinrc

Every time I turn around, it seems I've inadvertently changed some of the KDE desktop goodies, and the GUI's are not really forthcoming with "reset to defaults" options. It seems the place to look to find offending rc files is ~/.kde/share/config There are just so many kde/ & .kde/ & /kde4 directories scattered around the file system that I didn't know where to start. It's the hidden file in your home directory.

Silk Purses from Fabric Scraps (No Sows Were Harmed....)

2012-01-13T08:30:00.000-05:00

I have trouble throwing out tiny fabric scraps. I found this sort of small drawstring bag lets me use some of my less practical velvets and velours. The drawstrings here are of ribbon left over from a long-ago Christmas project.

Remembering "Cave of Forgotten Dreams"

2012-01-12T09:00:00.000-05:00

My wild New Year's Eve activity was watching Netflix's streaming video of Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams. I was expecting something soothing and low-key, and, indeed, there were beautiful landscapes, expert interviews, and hushed voices. However, the effect was astounding, and I've been thinking about the amazing prehistoric artwork ever since. This April, 2011 interview with Hezog is from Scientific American's Youtube channel.

Random Boot Failures, Linux Kernel Updates, and Hardware Troubles

2012-01-11T22:00:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week, Debian unstable offered me a kernel upgrade, and, after some cautious data backup, I installed it. Soon after, I attempted to reboot, and, sadly, it was back to kernel panic, can't find grub, can't find kernel, etc., etc. This time, using the Debian testing installation disk in rescue mode was no help. I re-installed grub, updated the configuration file (update-grub) and got the same errors. I shut down the computer and went to my laptop to search for help, and decided to try some alternative rescue disks: Super Grub2 and Rescatux, and, if that didn't suit, perhaps a Linux Mint live CD.

I burned the CD's inserted my first choice, SuperGrub2, and waited for it to spin. It never did (it turned out to be a bad disk). As I sat there, scratching my head, the computer loaded the Grub menu page, selected the first kernel, and proceeded to boot successfully.

So, perhaps, the problem is not a configuration problem, but a hardware problem. I get a variety of intermittent error messages concerning ata1 (and I was getting a bunch them yesterday, so once again I checked the hard drive with smartctl command line utilities. As before, both the long and short versions reported no problems. fsck also reported no problems.

The search terms "boot failure linux hardware" returned a few tales of woe similar to mine, such as Boot failure randomly. Can someone help?: Here's someone who has intermittent boot failures, and suspects a hardware problem. One reader comments:

one of the causes for this can be faulty memory. That can also explain why you sometimes have a problem: if that bad memory is not touched everything works like a charm. If it does get touch unexpected results can be expected. In general: irregular behaviour during boot always start thinking memory 1st. So run memtest from the live cd or from grub if you can boot into it and see if 1 of your memory modules is in bad shape and if so replace it.

The original poster eventually reports:

found a fix but not an explanation therefore help still needed here ;-)
The Fix--Disconnect the cable and take off the battery for a few seconds.
Conjectures--This fix lead me to conclude that maybe something is kept into memory of some hardware.

And here's someone who has the opposite problem from mine: [amd64] Reproducible cold boot failure (reboot succeeds) His computer fails to boot if it's been turned off for several hours, but will reboot, or boot successfully if it's been off for a short time. Eventually, he reports that he's found a memory issue:

In fact, one of the 4GB DIMMs in the system returns bogus data
(0x10000000 or 0x04000000 instead of 0) for some 40 to 50 seconds
after power-on. Once warmed up, memtest86+ runs for days without a
single extra data error (I wanted to have an estimate for the defect
having led to damaged data in disk files).

Running memtester showed no errors, although I started getting reams of complaints about ata:1.00 again. I haven't yet run the more comprehensive memtest, which has to run at start-up; I'll get to that in the next few days. Last night, aptitude update informed me that there was a kernel update. I went ahead and installed it, then shut down the computer. This morning, I powered up, and got a missing grub message, restarted, and the computer booted successfully. So far, today, I'm not getting any complaints about ata1.

Here are some resources I've found either helpful or informative this week:

Hardware Checking Resources for My Particular Problem

Test Memory Using memtester in Linux:
memtester is a user-space utility for testing the memory subsystem in a computer to determine if it is faulty. It does a good job of finding intermittent faults and non-deterministic faults. It has many tests to help catch borderline memory. memtester should compile and run on any 32- or 64-bit Unix or Unix-like system.
How should I run fsck on a Linux file system? fsck (not a mis-typed profanity, it's short for "file system check") checks and repairs *nix file systems. You can't (or shouldn't) run it on a mounted file system. As root,
Single User Mode and umount the file system: Issue command to change run level and umount the /home file system that is mounted on /dev/sda2:
```
# init 1
# umount /home
```
Run fsck:
```
# fsck /dev/sda2
```

Helpful Resources for Boot Failure

GRUB 2 bootloader - Full tutorial:
My goal is to provide people running any flavor of UNIX-like operating systems or multi-booting their computers and using GRUB as their bootloader with a simple, no-nonsense, step-by-step, proven and working tutorial that should allow them to quickly, easily and painlessly control the boot sequence of their systems.
MondoRescue HOWTO Utilization and Configuration of Mondo and Mindi under Linux
This document describes the use of mondo and mindi tools to realize disaster recovery backup of your systems. It provides information on installation, backup and restore modes, hardware and software requirements, and answers to some frequently asked questions. The goals are to offer a general view of the functions and their best usages. Mondo Rescue is a Disaster Recovery Solution which allows you to effortlessly backup and interactively restore Linux, Windows and other supported file system partitions to/from CD/DVD-+R/RW media, tape, NFS, ... and Mindi Linux provides the bootable emergency restore media which Mondo uses at boot-time.
Troubleshooting Boot Failures section of "Configuring a Linux Kernel" offers some advice on how to manage failures in a home-rolled kernel. It offers this advice:
A boot failure can either be due to: kernel configuration issue, a system configuration issue, or a hardware malfunction. It's pretty easy to guess which one is the hardest to detect but easiest to resolve (hint: it's the hardware malfunction one). The other ones, well, they require a bit preparation in order to easily troubleshoot and, eventually, solve.
How to solve boot problems with Ubuntu after kernel upgrade: Here's a clear explanation of what happens as linux boots, and a description of some of the things that can go wrong. It didn't help me fix my problems, but I do understand the messages I get as the process fails.
From the same Web site, a description of Grub2. It's a little old, but this is where I found a link to Super Grub2 and Rescatux, boot problem fixes meant to be easier and quicker than using the rescue mode on the system installer.
Update: SuperGrub2 returns this message: "not a known file system" and fails to find an OS. Not really helpful for my problem, which, to be fair, probably has little to do with Grub.

Scraps Into Yardage Into Hand-bags

2012-01-11T09:00:00.000-05:00

2011 was my year of sewing with fabric scraps. It wasn't really a resolution, but I had eight big plastic tubs of fabric scraps, and only four tubs of fabric yardage. I ended the year with five tubs of scraps, partly because it's trimmed up and better organized, and partly because I decided to turn scraps into yardage using my serger. The serger's great feature for this purpose is the way trims and finishes the raw edges, so I don't need to cut the scraps to fit one another. I just place two pieces right-sides together, eyeball a straight stitching line, and sew. After I turned some of my denim bits into crazy patchwork hunks of fabric--incorporating a few other heavy-weight scraps for contrast--I cut the "new" fabric into hand-bag pattern pieces.

I've been carrying this bag around with me for a few months. I didn't line it, because it seemed stiff enough as is, and the serged seams inside have not frayed or become untidy. That bit of red on the outside pocket is a remnant of a Guatemalan hand-woven shirt I bought in Costa Rica.

I sewed these bags in the spring, but they seem a little plain and lack-luster. I'm waiting for embellishment inspiration.

If I Were a Poor Iowa Kid--Oh Wait, I Was

2012-01-10T08:00:00.000-05:00

Art of the Rural has a complete and interesting recap of the Stephen Bloom kerfuffle in "The Atlantic." I wasn't really curious about it until I read Matthew Fluharty's blog post. He includes a link to this interview with Bloom, in which Bloom characterizes his article as "satire" and "parody."

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I read the article, and couldn't identify what, specifically, Bloom was parodying or satirizing. What I read was, mostly, an unsympathetic description of rural poverty. Why he (and The Atlantic) thought that another disdainful description of white people at economic and cultural disadvantage would be useful and informative is puzzling. There's been so much of it, ranging from the nineteenth century Hatfield--McCoy feud's national newspaper coverage to Bill O'Reilly ranting that drunken Appalachians should move to Miami and "get a job".

The Iowa article was so mean-spirited and so much in the mood of "white-trash" bashing that it reminded me of the appalling Gene Marks article, If I Were a Poor Black Kid, on the Forbes website. (Originally published as "If I WAS a Poor Black Kid"--I guess Mr. Marks is not quite as well-educated as he thought.)

"If I Were a Poor Black Kid" unleashed a flood of angry and funny responses, including Poorblackkid.com. Similarly, Bloom's Web article is now accompanied by a variety of responses, and helped inspire this much-viewed video:

Because of the vehement response to the Forbes article, several people have suggested that it is actually an Internet troll tactic, and that the outrage has raised Gene Marks' profile and readership. Perhaps that explains why The Atlantic published Bloom's grouchy and tired critique of his adopted home. Willie Geist's NBC interview above notes that Bloom is "in hiding" because he has received harassing phone calls. I certainly hope no harm comes to his family because of his flame-bait. That kind of behavior only reinforces Bloom's clue-less disdain.

The Long and Short of Writing Practice

2012-01-09T10:00:00.000-05:00

Via Mirabilis.ca: A long sentence is worth the read --by Pico Iyer.

Not everyone wants to be reduced to a sound bite or a bumper sticker. Enter (I hope) the long sentence: the collection of clauses that is so many-chambered and lavish and abundant in tones and suggestions, that has so much room for near-contradiction and ambiguity and those places in memory or imagination that can't be simplified, or put into easy words, that it allows the reader to keep many things in her head and heart at the same time, and to descend, as by a spiral staircase, deeper into herself and those things that won't be squeezed into an either/or. With each clause, we're taken further and further from trite conclusions--or that at least is the hope--and away from reductionism....

Years of writing technical and scientific papers matched with my current practice of Web writing have coached me to appreciate the short and succinct, but my own prose runs to the baroque and confusing. I look forward to Sherry's and Dave's 140-character word snapshots, and I spent some time considering joining the River of Stones project, but my trite attempts seem more like "sound bites" and "bumper stickers" than Fiona's mindful writing practice:

A small stone is a very short piece of writing that precisely captures a fully-engaged moment. There are no strict rules for what makes a piece of writing a small stone, as there are for forms such as haiku. The process of finding small stones is as important as the finished product--searching for them will encourage you to keep your eyes (and ears, nose, mouth, fingers, feelings and mind) open.

I truly appreciate well-written instruction manuals, field guides, taxonomic descriptions, and crochet patterns. I reread Elizabeth Zimmermann's knitting books just for fun as often as I refer to them for techniques. They are special because they offer a little more than bare-bones instructions, but not so much blather that you lose track of the procedure. (I'm afraid my own instructions are blather-heavy.) I'm skilled with observation of detail, but haiku writing appears to be contrary to my nature. Pico Iyer gives me hope for when he says "...[T]he promise of the long sentence is that it will take you beyond the known, far from shore, into depths and mysteries you can't get your mind, or most of your words, around."

Textbook Troubles and Dr. Feynman

2012-01-08T14:56:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I teach undergraduate college classes. As an adjunct faculty member, I don't pick the textbooks or write my own syllabus, so I'm painfully aware of how much textbooks cost, and how frequent production of new editions keeps the students buying new rather than used books. There's talk about how e-books will save students money, but in my experience, the e-books cost just as much as physical books. I was heartened to read this: Steinberg Proposal Slashes Textbook Costs for California College Students:

At a time when the affordability of higher education is at the forefront of national debate, this legislation would create Open Educational Resources (OER) in California, where undergraduate students would be able to have free access to the 50 core textbooks required for lower-division coursework via computer or mobile device through a digital open source library, with the option of buying a printed version for around $20. The legislation would also require publishers selling textbooks adopted by faculty for the most widely-taken lower division courses to provide at least three free copies of those books to be placed on reserve in California public college and university campus libraries.

If college textbook highway robbery were not aggravating enough, there's always the topic of K-12 textbooks in public schools. I enjoyed re-reading Judging Books by Their Covers:

In 1964 the eminent physicist Richard Feynman served on the State of California's Curriculum Commission and saw how the Commission chose math textbooks for use in California's public schools. In his acerbic memoir of that experience...Feynman analyzed the Commission's idiotic method of evaluating books, and he described some of the tactics employed by schoolbook salesmen who wanted the Commission to adopt their shoddy products. "Judging Books by Their Covers" appeared as a chapter in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman...(1985).

In case reading this makes you nostalgic for Dr. Feynman (as it did me), here are links to some fine Feynman videos: The Richard Feynman Trilogy: The Physicist Captured in Three Films | Open Culture.

New kwinrc Fixes KDE 4.6 Desktop Effects

2012-01-07T10:30:00.000-05:00

To my great surprise, I've got KDE 4.6 Desktop Effects working again. My recent desktop environment problems had led me to reinstall Debian testing and upgrade to unstable (sid). The newly-installed KDE Desktop Effects were working properly until I copied all my /home/rebecca files onto the new installation and restarted. I tried to adjust them using the GUI panel:

System Settings > Desktop Effects > Advanced

No luck. I couldn't revert to a clean install. I was just going to live with it because I didn't care about the missing desktop effects at all, but I really hate it when I don't know why something does or doesn't work, so I have looked sporadically for answers, and this morning, I found this: [SOLVED] KWin effects not working (ATI, catalyst, KDE):

I have had something like this happen a few times, too. Removing ~/.kde/share/config/kwinrc always seems to fix it.

I renamed the kwinrc file, moved it to an out-of-the-way directory, and rebooted. A new and much shorter kwinrc file was generated, and I haven't found any other KDE attributes changed. Here's the difference in file size between the new kwinrc file and the old, renamed file:


rebecca@hecate:~/.kde/share/config$ wc -l kwinrc
23 kwinrc
rebecca@hecate:~/.kde/share/config$ wc -l /home/rebecca/xxx
166 /home/rebecca/xxx

I haven't yet figured out what those 143 lines in the old file did, but the problem must be in there somewhere. Something to occupy my idle hours, I suppose.

Closet Sachets--Upcycled and Emblematic

2012-01-06T10:58:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I don't know what my New Year's resolutions are until the year is over. 2011 was a year of going through my old stuff, sorting, deciding what to discard and what to work with going forward. That was most obvious in my fiber activities, but I think my sorting, sewing, spinning and knitting projects symbolized some internal housekeeping processes best left unblogged. Perhaps Pincushion of My Ancestors, Slipcovered and Starched was a foreshadowing of my 2011 theme.

Whether or not they are emblematic of my soul, here are some sachet bags I made out of stained or unusable kitchen towels my grandmother and her friend embroidered back in the early 1950's. To pretty for rags, too damaged to display, I inherited a substantial collection of such linens.

I finished and photographed these in the early spring. Then I stuffed them with dried lavender flowers and stuffed them into my dresser drawers, where I see them whenever I change my socks.

The black-eyed-Susan-embroidered bags represent my first attempt at crocheting lace borders onto a sewing project. I'm not ready for delicate hankie crochet, but I'm moving toward that goal. The pale green and yellow crochet threads are leftovers given me from a friend's attic stash, so these represent totally upcycled projects.

Debian Wheezy to Sid--Are You Sure It Won't Blow Up?

2012-01-05T15:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday's post reporting a successful switch to KDE was a bit premature, at least on my desktop machine. The laptop is still OK (I hope).

After a few days, all the "Desktop Effects" quit abruptly, perhaps after an update. (I was running Debian testing, which has daily updates.) I tweaked and adjusted, and eventually some of them started working again, perhaps because I switched compositing type from OpenGL to XRender. This change is located:

System Settings > Desktop Effects > Advanced

KDE has changed so much since I last used it that I have much frustration in locating these sorts of things.

More updates, including a kernel update, ensued, and I had a flashback to my Mysterious Errors and kernel panics of a year ago. Restarting the computer produced either a grub rescue > prompt, a "can't find the file" message after selecting the kernel on the grub menu, or a kernel panic. In every case, I was able to boot from a Debian net install disk using "rescue mode," re-install grub thus:

# grub-install followed by #update-grub

I could then remove the CD and reboot successfully once. Every time I restarted the computer, I had to go through this song and dance. As I said last January,

After I...powered up, the little darlin' booted right up....I really hate it when I don't know what was wrong, or why it's running now. Did something reset while it was powered down? Did jiggling the cables do the trick? Was it dust? And what's with all the update-grub/reboot iterations? Why do I always have to do that over and over again? And why does none of this ever happen with my Linux laptop?

Last year, the problem mysteriously resolved after a few tries, but this time, I started getting more and different error messages that I couldn't figure out. Googling showed me that I wasn't alone in my troubles, but I couldn't find a solution that worked for me. I made two fresh back-ups of my home directories, and resolved to choose "Install" rather than "Rescue Mode" at the next reboot.

The re-install ran without any problems, and, while I'll have to reconfigure my localhost installations of Wordpress and Drupal (they needed work anyway), this fresh install is now scoured clean of all the Gnome, XFCE, icewm, sawfish, awesome, metacity, etc. libraries and programs, which I'm not using but which require updates anyway.

Last time I installed testing, I tried without success to upgrade to sid, that is, Debian unstable. This time, it worked for me, and I am now typing on cutting edge Debian. The Debian GNU/Linux FAQ--Choosing a Debian distribution recommends sid over testing:

There is no perfect answer but only a "wise guess" could be made while deciding between unstable and testing. My personal order of preference is Stable, Unstable and Testing. The issue is like this:
Stable is rock solid. It does not break.

Testing breaks less often than Unstable. But when it breaks, it takes a long time for things to get rectified. Sometimes this could be days and it could be months at times.

Unstable changes a lot, and it can break at any point. However, fixes get
rectified in many occasions in a couple of days and it always has the latest
releases of software packaged for Debian.

Raphael Hertzog also reassures me that "Unstable is a quickly moving target and it's not for everybody. But you can use it and your computer won't explode" in his blog post 5 reasons why Debian Unstable does not deserve its name

Now, it's back to fiddling with my brave new Debian. I wonder how long before I break it?

Return of the KDE User

2012-01-04T16:59:00.000-05:00

The last few weeks I've been shopping for a new Linux Desktop environment. I never do this voluntarily, but my distro, Debian testing (Wheezy) has upgraded to Gnome 3, and the transition has not been smooth. On my desktop machine, Gnome 3 hangs at shutdown (and sometimes at start-up), and the Gnome display manager, gdm3, doesn't work well on my laptop.

I've been using Gnome because at the end of 2009, updates to KDE 4.4 messed up, along with Xorg, probably due to a poor fit between my video chip and the open source driver. I used Kubuntu for a while, but eventually had so many problems that I reformatted my hard drive and installed Debian testing, complete with the default Gnome desktop. I had preferred KDE, particularly for Digikam, the photo management program par excellence, but it was just too much work to keep the KDE eye-candy functioning, and it was easy enough to install "Digikam + dependencies." This produced an unattractive redundancy of libraries, but there's plenty of room on the old hard drive, so what the heck.

Anyway, word on the Web has been that Linus himself has switched to Xfce because Gnome 3 and KDE 4 feature too much "crazy crap," so, even before Gnome 3 hit Debian testing, I installed Xfce on the desktop machine and the laptop, and tried it out. Xfce seemed fine, but I also auditioned some of the window managers, and revisited icewm, which I previously have run happily on pokey old hardware.

When the Gnome3 update finally happened, I discovered that the new Gnome display manager caused all sorts of problems, especially on my laptop, which is also used by a (reluctant) Linux novice. (The Mac mini he used to use bit the dirt a few months back.) I needed an easy-to-understand log-in screen, and the KDE display manager fit the bill best.

What with all the KDE stuff I was using, I gave the KDE 4.6 environment a whirl, and all the compositing features that used to mess up my desktop machine now work perfectly. They also work fine on the laptop. Most of the fancy "plasmoids" and "Activities" seem useless to me so far, but I can ignore them easily enough.

If I were a real, nuts and bolts Linux gal, I'd select a window manager like icewm or sawfish, edit my .conf files to get exactly the user experience I want, and never be bothered by all these fancy-schmancy desktop environments. My ideal user experience would resemble the 1998-era Sun Workstation I used so happily at The Institute. A few terminal windows, Xclock, an Emacs window, and a browser--I'm in business. Too bad I have this yen for shiny visual effects and big chunks of software that install themselves and never make me figure out where the .conf files are. Shallow and lazy--that's me.

This Should Discourage Mice

2012-01-03T14:36:00.001-05:00

A mouse built a summer nest in my box of Christmas ornaments and stuffed the stable full of chew-able ornament pieces. Once I picked the bits of paper from behind the Holy Family and glued the middle King back in place, things were nearly good as new--provided you overlook how I broke two little lambs off and glued them back before Mom got home when I was eight.

Cold, wind, and snow make this another good day for indoor activities (such as packing up Christmas decorations), and Princess seems to agree. Certainly there will be no mice in the manger in this setting.

J.R.R. Tolkien--A Video On His Birthday

2012-01-03T13:33:00.000-05:00

Today at Open Culture: The best free cultural & educational media on the web, a link to a wonderful video: J.R.R. Tolkien in His Own Words

In celebration of Tolkien’s 120th birthday, we present a fascinating film on the author from the BBC series In Their Own Words: British Novelists. The 27-minute film was first broadcast in March of 1968, when Tolkien was 76 years old, and includes interviews and footage of the old man at his haunts in Oxford.

Snowy Day Sewing Room

2012-01-02T14:19:00.000-05:00

Yesterday's cold rain has given way to icy wind and dry snowflakes. Princess wisely has chosen to join me in the sewing room.

Links for the Teapot

2012-01-02T13:35:00.000-05:00

Tee-Ernte und Produktion in Doi Mae Salong, Nordthailand - YouTube:

I don't know why I favor tea. I feel vaguely un-American when breakfasting away from home, but coffee just doesn't start the day for me. Tea has the added charm of coming from a beautiful woody plant. Here's a video of Thai tea production and a collection of tea links: Tea | Letha's Asian Health Secrets:

'via Blog this'

Droop Mountain, New Year's Day, 2012

2012-01-01T15:49:00.000-05:00

New Year's early morning featured sun and blue skies over the valley fog, but by the time I left the house for the First Day Hike at the Droop Mountain Battlefield Park, these high clouds had moved in. Nevertheless, it was a fine day for a walk in my favorite park.

The hike as advertised in The Pocahontas Times:

"It will be a nice winter hike to see the park at a time when people don't normally see it," added Droop Superintendent Mike Smith.
While few people visit the historic state park in the off-season, Smith said the winter months offer their own special perspective on its trails. Smith said this is Droop Mountain Battlefield State Park's first scheduled winter hike in recent memory.
The First Day hike will cover two, mostly level, miles of trails, said Smith. Hikers will set out at 10 a.m. from the park office on a loop that encompasses the Overlook Trail as well as Horse Heaven or Old Soldier trail, progressing toward the lookout tower and back across to the park office on the Musket Trail.
Along the way, hikers will find an old bear den, small cave and rock features similar to those found at nearby Beartown State Park, as well as a stunning view toward Briery Knob. Smith will have a fire going in the park workshop and "maybe even some warm apple cider for when we return."

I've been all over the park at all seasons, but this is the first time I've had the pleasure of Mike Smith's guided tour. Civil War history, biogeography, prehistoric artifacts, or animal tracks--Mike can tell you something interesting about any aspect of the park.

The rain these clouds promised finally caught up with me on my way home. If you have to get caught in January rain, it's best to be within a quarter mile of the house.

Overlocking Lingerie Elastic--A Tip to Remember

2011-04-04T18:40:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, when I can't think of anything to write, it's time to do something less verbally demanding, like sewing. I've been practicing my serger skills, and went out in the snow this weekend to photograph some recent projects. Overlocking small pieces of fabric together creates enough yardage to make these underbritches out of small jersey scraps and old tee-shirts with cool graphics. (That's a big green praying mantis on the far right.)

Overlocking jersey knit seams is fairly straightforward, but I've had some trouble attaching lingerie elastic using the serger. The overlock stitches stretched out the elastic and it didn't snap back, producing sadly drooping drawers. Serger books I've seen suggest flatlock stitch for elastic, and this looks alright, but it doesn't seem very durable.

This time, I used an overlock stitch and played around with the stitch length adjustment. A long stitch length means fewer stitches per inch, and less damage to the elastic. Sure enough, overlock at maximum stitch length gave a tidy finish, and allowed the elastic to retain its snap.

Overlocking alone attached the elastic adequately, but I've noticed that ready-to-wear lingerie often has the elastic turned under and stitched down with a multi-stitch zig-zag, for a more delicate look, so that's what I did here.

Proofreading Matters

2011-04-01T11:32:00.000-04:00

This is wonderful, and Taylor Mali has much more, like:

Snowy Setback--2011 Tree Year

2011-03-27T15:46:00.000-04:00

After several warm days that made the lilac and rose bushes pop new leaves, winter weather returned.

This is the same snowstorm that caught Sherry on her way home from West Virginia. Bourbon County had a sunny, snow-melting day today, but here on Droop, the snow persists.

St. Patrick's Day View of Lake Kilarney

2011-03-17T12:54:00.000-04:00

Another holiday postcard from Grandma's album--this one was never addressed or mailed. It says "Erin Go Bragh--Upper Lake Kilarney." Happy St. Patrick's Day!

19th Century Doll Clothes Links

2011-03-15T19:34:00.000-04:00

I confess I never quite outgrew my girlish fascination with doll clothes, doll houses, and miniatures. I quit making doll clothes because I needed clothes more than dollies did, and there were so many other things to do. However, browsing the Internet shows me that there are a lot of grown-up ladies (and gentlemen) who never put aside their interest in miniatures, scale models, dolls, and doll clothes.

Although I feel I could easily be sucked into the world of dressing vintage dolls or even creating fanciful cloth dolls, I'm going to confine myself to making clothes for this one doll. To that end, I've put together a collection of links that I found helpful, informative, or just interesting.

Doll Clothes Patterns from the Butterick Publishing Company, 1901. I was surprised to find that "The Delineator" marketed tissue paper patterns for doll clothes. This page shows the pattern envelope drawings in enough detail to copy fairly easily.
Child with china doll: 19th century photographs of children and their antique dolls.
"Dolls' outfits are a feature in the toy shops this season."...from Harper's Bazaar, 1872. These drawings of doll costumes are small and not detailed, but it's interesting to see the variety of characters dolls were meant to represent.
THROUGH THE EYES OF A DOLL From The Youth's Companion, 1842. This is a rather gruesome little tale, informing the magazine's young readers that their mommies and daddies would be sad if their children died, but that excessive grief is idolatrous, and they'll probably have replacement kids anyway. Presumably, the kids knew that already, but jeez, who wants hear that from a doll?
Restoration and dressing of a china doll. Nancy Wilson Barbata, aka The Doll Fancier, photographed the steps she went through to restore and dress a nineteenth century china head doll.
Those Old Dolls Are Much Fussier Than Humans by Joan Kiplinger. This is a detailed and helpful guide to designing and sewing period-appropriate garments for old dolls.
The Doll Costumer's Guild The Doll Costumer's Guild publishes 4 journals a year with information, patterns and sewing techniques for authentic costuming of antique dolls made from 1840 through the turn of the century. I'm not sure if this Web site is still active, but the illustrations are quite informative.
Freebie Friday - Drafting Doll Clothes. Links to several interesting approaches to making doll dress patterns
Past Patterns makes historical patterns for real people, not dolls, but I find their pattern envelope illustrations very helpful in understanding how old-time clothes were constructed.

Dormancy--2011 Tree Year

2011-03-11T15:38:00.000-05:00

It's snowing again today, and the sumac buds are tight shut still.

Like other smooth-barked tree species here, the sumacs have lots of lovely lichens.

Late Winter Sumac--2011 Tree Year

2011-03-09T11:48:00.000-05:00

Yesterday's sky did not promise spring, and this morning we had snow and sleet. Robins have been visiting the sumac fruits, but the main customers there are our red-bellied woodpeckers.

Lately, they have been rather rough in their foraging, and pieces of the fruiting bodies are scattered on the ground under the trees.

I wonder whether they enjoy these dry, furry fruits, or if they're the last choice here at the end of winter.

Heraldic Socks

2011-03-08T19:12:00.000-05:00

I've finished another pair of socks from my vintage yarn collection. This yarn is what they used to call "baby weight," and judging by the label and the pastel color palette, "Peter Pan" by Wendy was intended for baby clothes. The fiber content is 55% nylon, which made me think it would make long-wearing socks. If the nylon/acrylic fibers are uncomfortable in shoes (as is sometimes the case) I'll have a nifty pair of bed socks for cold nights.

I used Barbara Walker's Heraldic Pattern from A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, pp. 150-151. It's a pattern I've wanted to try for many years, but I had great difficulty converting the back-and-forth, flat knitting direction to in-the-round directions, mostly because every stitch is, at some point, twisted with another stitch. The odd directions in rows 23, 25, 31, and 32 reflect the way I worked around this.

The end result of a seamless tube of diagonals is very pleasing. I'm going to have to use this pattern on another pair of socks if only to justify the time I spent working out the "round and round" directions.

Barbara Walker's Heraldic Pattern
Multiple of 12 stitches, knitted in the round
Row 1: *K2, P4*
Row 2: *RT, K4, LT, K4*
Row 3: *K2, P4*
Row 4: Knit
Row 5: *K2, P4*
Row 6: *RT, K4, LT, K4*
Row 7: *K2, P4*
Row 8: *K1, LT, K2, RT, K5*
Row 9: *K3, P2, K3, P4*
Row 10: *K2, LT, RT, K6*
Row 11: *K8, P4*
Row 12: *K3, RT, K7*
Row 13: *K8, P4*
Row 14: *K2, RT, LT, K6*
Row 15: *K3, P2, K3, P4*
Row 16: *K1, RT, K2, LT, K5*
Row 17: *K2, P4*
Row 18: *LT, K4, RT, K4*
Row 19: *K2, P4*
Row 20: Knit
Row 21: *K2, P4*
Row 22: *LT, K4, RT, K4*
Row 23: *K2, P4* Last repeat, K2, P3. Slip last stitch
onto next needle, making it first stitch of next row.
Row 24: *RT, K6, LT, K2* 
Row 25: *K3, P4, K3, P2* At end of last repeat, slip
first stitch from next row onto working needle, knit.
Row 26: *K8, LT, RT*
Row 27: *K2, P4, K6*
Row 28: *K9, LT, K1*
Row 29: *K2, P4, K6*
Row 30: *K8, RT, LT*
Row 31: *K2, P4, K3, P2, K1* Last repeat K2, P4, K3, P2
Slip last stitch onto next needle, making it
first stitch of next row.
Row 32: *LT, K6, RT, K2* At end of last repeat, slip
first stitch from next row onto working needle, knit.

Rethinking My Web Presence

2011-03-07T10:17:00.002-05:00

Now that I've updated my Drupal website, I need to think of something useful to do with it. I've used it for sharing information with my students, and as a trial ground to learn to use content management systems, but I don't currently have a need for either of those purposes. I've also thought about using it as an adjunct to selling my fiber arts projects, but I've made no move in that direction.

I made that site to learn how to use Drupal, but I'm also thinking about switching to Wordpress. Ironically, I started this Blogger blog to get my website indexed, but these days, this blog covers most of my web presence needs. Maybe I should drop the spiceridge.com site all together?

Here are some tips I've collected for using Drupal for a personal site. (See, I'm using this blog to keep track of links I don't want to lose.)

Workaday Dolly

2011-03-05T14:25:00.000-05:00

For now, Grandma's dolly is going to sit around in her underwear. Once that would have been indecent, but nowadays, it just means she telecommutes. The silk dress dress didn't dissolve or shrink from washing, as I had feared, but it was so badly stained that I won't be putting it back on her.

I wonder what my mom would have made of e-commerce. It only took me half an hour to learn that this is what collectors call a "flathead" china doll, most likely made in the waning days of "lady dolls" (as opposed to "baby dolls") as the little girl's gift of choice. Although this doll is in relatively good condition and has most of her original clothes, she is just one of the common dollies. Collectors pay the big bucks for rare dolls that were never played with.

Meanwhile, after washing and ironing her complicated lingerie, I'm feeling fond of her and thinking about making her some new outfits. I believe I can make an acceptable period dress--perhaps a wrapper with an apron, or a shirtwaist and skirt. I do have those seven plastic tubs of fabric scraps, and fitting doll clothes is much simpler than fitting human clothes. Dolls don't need wearing ease and don't ever complain.

Overcoming My Fear of Antique Dolls

2011-03-04T11:20:00.000-05:00

Recently I pulled my grandmother's china doll out of the box I've kept it in since clearing out my mother's house in 1996. Mom, in her turn had kept it in a box after clearing out her own mother's house in 1963. Mom used to show me the doll occasionally, telling me it was a valuable antique which we would restore "someday." She kept some vintage fabric scraps and 1960's magazine clippings with the doll.

I've decided to end the family tradition of not knowing what to do with this doll. I could clean it up and display it, sell it, or perhaps find some way to preserve it in storage, but I no longer keep stuff just because I'm afraid to get rid of it.

As a little girl I was frightened of the doll--it made me think of graves and corpses. Opening the box, I found it was just as creepy as I remembered. It was dressed in a silk gown my mom had told me was made from "Aunt Ella's wedding dress," meaning her dad's sister. The dress had a number of brown stains, was grey with dust, and smelled musty.

I undressed the doll (imagining how horrified my mom would have been to catch me playing with it) and suddenly, it looked more pleasant and friendly. (I couldn't bring myself to take a picture of doll, dress and all. It was too disturbing.)

In the first picture, it's just wearing a chemise and some lace scraps that were sewn on, not fashioned into a blouse. I clipped the threads holding it on and removed the chemise.

The stockings and shoes are sewn and pinned in place, and I didn't have confidence that I could replace them. The doll body is made of muslin stuffed with sawdust, not kidskin, as Mom had thought. It has kidskin forearms and hands with individually-sewn fingers. The painted hair shows some wear on the back, suggesting that my grandma played with her, but Grandma must have been big enough to avoid dropping a 22-inch doll on its china head too often. I'm guessing she might have been six or seven, which means she got the doll about 1890.

Drupal Updates Long Deferred

2011-03-03T17:39:00.003-05:00

I've been putting off updating my Drupal Web page for most of the winter, but I thought I'd better get it taken care of before spring or I wouldn't do it at all.

The first thing I had to do was get my desktop computer set up as LAMP, Linux Apache Mysql PHP, so I could have a test site.

I had apache2 and php5 already installed on my Linux desktop (Debian Wheezy). All I needed to do was add php gd support to Apache thus:
# apt-get install php5-gd # /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
For the "M" in LAMP, all I had to do (as root) in Debian was:
# aptitude install mysql-server mysql-client # aptitude install phpmyadmin
and then tell apache2 to find phpmyadmin: "Include /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf"

In the process of relocating a Drupal site to a local machine for testing, one has to clone the database. PHPmyAdmin has a push-button function for exporting a database; however, my database has grown too large for the push-button "import" to work. There are lots of bad hacks with high Google ratings, but they're much harder than using command line MYSQL with the commands given at Import/Export Large MYSQL Databases. "Source" is a dandy sql command I'd totally forgotten--it tells mysql to read a file and do the commands given there.

After all this, adding the updates to the Drupal installation took a few minutes. I haven't finished with the Spice Ridge site yet--I'd like to do it after a good night's sleep, in case something goes wrong; however, it's been my experience that the live site is easier to manage than the localhost one.

Every time I update Drupal, things go a little differently; however this time, I found most of the things I needed to do in my own Drupal posts here on my blog. I may bore my readers, but these Linux and Open Source posts are the things I revisit most often.

Spinning Away a Winter Virus

2011-03-02T16:04:00.000-05:00

Other than these skeins of Rambouillet yarn, I have little to show for the past few days. I thought I might get through a winter without a head cold, but a virus got a hold of me, and my mental acuity has not been too sharp. Fortunately, spinning is something that doesn't require much concentration, and I have compressed a big plastic bin chock-full of fleece bats into a dozen skeins of yarn, freeing up about four cubic feet of closet space.

You may recognize my ancestral pincushion posing next to the yarn, sporting its collection of hatpins. My grandma and her mother must have been brave women to use these fierce implements to fasten down their hats.

Sprouting Onion Seeds

2011-02-22T17:53:00.000-05:00

I've never sprouted onion seeds before, and I didn't expect them to be so curly and cute. I hope these will give us better success than we've had with onion sets here. The garden catalog called this variety "Walla Walla," and promised they'd do great things.

A Little Late Winter Spinning

2011-02-20T16:47:00.000-05:00

In my continuing efforts to clear some closet space, I've been spinning a plastic tub full of dyed and carded fleece. Yarn takes up so much less space than wool batts! These four colors of Rambouillet wool represent four different crockpot dye baths.

These two batches of yarn represent the last of a very dirty fleece that was given to me. Even as yarn it's got burdock bits in it, but I really like the complex way it takes the dye. Once dyed, it was just too pretty to throw out.

Devil In the Shirt Details

2011-02-17T19:01:00.000-05:00

Back in October, I read about The Never Too Many White Shirts Project, started by Barbara at Sewing on the Edge. Quite a few stitchers have signed up to sew ten white shirts, the idea being that white shirts focus our attention on fit, line, and details, and sewing a bunch of them is useful because they are such versatile wardrobe components.

I think it's a cool idea, but I didn't sign up because I don't need ten new shirts. Since I was a teenager, most of the clothes I've made myself have been shirts, or else blouses styled like shirts, with collars on collar stands, shirt cuffs, front buttons, etc. In college, my incredulous roommate counted 24 shirts in my closet. They were all made from the same pattern.

When I was a grad student in Washington D.C., I discovered that the Georgetown Junior League's Thrift shop had gorgeously-detailed, seldom-worn men's dress shirts for under five dollars. The colors and patterns were sometimes eccentric, but I was a regular shopper there.

A few years ago I bought Shirtmaking by David Page Coffin. It's the most interesting sewing book I've ever read, and I've incorporated his design details into my shirt-making for several years now.

While Barbara works on sewing slowly and attending to professional shirtmaker's details, I've been looking for ways to sew quick and easy projects with my new serger. Of course I've tried it on shirt patterns.

I used my favorite men's shirt pattern, Kwik-Sew 2777 to make myself this nightshirt and flannel shirt. This time, I altered the pattern with a full bust adjustment, rotating the side dart to pleats at the shoulder seams. I was pleased to find that the shirts fit me much better this way.

For the nightshirt, I used a pattern size larger than I normally wear, and I made it night-gown length. I used the collar stand but no collar for a nineteenth century look, and I made the front one piece with a placket, for the same reason. I tried some cuff and cuff placket shortcuts using the serger, but they didn't turn out particularly well, so I made menswear cuff plackets using the pattern in Coffin's "Shirtmaking" on the flannel shirt.

The serger gave very nice seam finishes and shirt tail hems, but I couldn't bring myself to dispense with the menswear shirt details in these garments. I guess I'm just too shirt-obsessed--a "shirty dame."

Blame It On the Cat

2011-02-15T11:15:00.003-05:00

Was Valentine's Day disappointing? Could Kitty be responsible? "Single White Feline."

Roses and Forget-Me-Nots--To My Valentine

2011-02-14T07:14:00.003-05:00

A heart made of roses and an arrow made of something I don't recognize--the only floral message I understand here is "To my valentine" entwined with forget-me-nots. I can't read the post office in the postmark, either. All I know is that it was addressed to Florence Williamson and mailed February 13, 1909 somewhere in Iowa.

Knitting Meets Patchwork!

2011-02-13T14:07:00.001-05:00

Last summer, I had no time for fiber fun, but with too many jobs came enough cash to hit a half-price book sale at Interweave, which I think of as "Eye-Candy Central" for fiber arts. One of the gems I'd been wishing for was Domino Knitting by Vivian Hoxbro. The patchwork appearance of her knitted fabric really appealed to me, but I was mystified by the technique. I assumed it would be something simple, that the rest of the book would be pretty pictures of knitted things, and I would regret spending money on a whole book of eye-candy. (It's happened before.) Finding it on sale after eight or nine years of wishing for it, I finally bought it.

I was delighted to find that it was more than a pretty book and a simple technique. I was inspired by the different ways projects can develop, and I had to try her "Learn While You Knit" projects. My cotton yarn odds and ends didn't knit up nicely, so I used acrylic yarn scraps to make this "pot-holder." Because acrylic yarn can melt, I decided to transform the 16-square fabric into a vest for my teddy bear. With a few extra squares knitted on for the front, it seems to fit him perfectly.

Here are some Web-based inspirations for modular or "domino" knitting.

Domino knit slippers from Ulla, an online Finnish magazine.
modular slippers It's in Finnish (I think) and I have no clue, but there are wonderful photos of adorable knit items, so if you knit from pictures (which is what I usually do) it's a great resource.
Slippers Into Socks is where I found the links to the Finnish sites. Melody at Fibermania is responsible for the modular socks, and her blog is amazing, whether you like quilting, knitting, painting, or just love pretty colors.
Woolly Thoughts: In Pursuit of Crafty Mathematics is a wonderful site I'd forgotten about, and it includes some modular knitting.
The Ultimate Stash-Buster: Modular Knitting!--Modular shells!

Domino Knitting (Knitting Technique series)

Mandolin Cases from Denim Scraps

2011-02-12T13:00:00.008-05:00

After making the denim patchwork coverlet, I decided I liked working with these denim strips so much that I cut up my entire collection of recycled denim. Of course, I ended up with a small grocery bag of leftovers that were too good to throw away, but the final result was a more compact pile of scraps, some of which were ready to sew.

A few months ago, when I got a request for a mandolin case, I turned to this scrap collection (which had expanded, as scrap collections always do). It didn't take long to overlock the seams on this project once I'd located a zipper and figured out how to construct the bag. I've lined it with a sweatshirt fleece scrap. The pocket on the side of the case was once the bib from a pair of overalls. It's big enough to hold a tuner and some extra stings and picks.

Soon, another mandolin case was requested, and, once I'd found a zipper (from a discarded notebook), I sewed this one up the same way. Unfortunately, I didn't have any more denim overall bibs, so I made a small zippered pocket out of short denim strips.

The serger makes this sort of patchwork go really fast, and the overlock seam finish looks interesting all on its own. I'm thinking about making the seamy side the right side on some project.

New Yardage from Old Fabric Scraps

2011-02-11T11:51:00.002-05:00

Last fall, I discovered I had more fabric scraps by volume than I had uncut, garment ready fabric yardage. (Seven large plastic bins of scraps, but only six tubs of yardage.) After my frenzy of garment construction as I got to know my new serger, I realized that if I was going to keep sewing at that rate, I needed to either use my scraps or win the lottery.

Sewing with a serger can go pretty quickly, and the tidy seam finish gives a wrong side that looks much neater than this.

I've been experimenting with sewing small bits of fabric together to "create new yardage." With my collection of tee-shirt knits, I've cut odd-shaped scraps into wide strips straight on the fabric grain and then overlocked the strips together to produce bigger pieces. Then I cut garments from them. So far, I've just pieced together bits of the same fabric, and cut out my favorite underbritches patterns from them. However, I'm toying with the idea of a harlequin-patterned tee-shirt or cardigan.

I've also dipped into my collection of odd-shaped denim scraps that are too big to throw away and too small for anything useful, to see if I could make "new fabric" without following the grain line. The smaller the scraps, the more tedious the piecing process, and when your new seams have to cross the seams you've sewn previously, a trip to the ironing board is necessary. Still, it's much faster than the foundation piecing technique I used for my crazy-patchwork window quilts.

Here are a couple of old potholders I've re-upholstered with denim scraps. They're a little rough around the edges, but I won't burn my hands or the counter top with these.

There are so many ideas for fabric scraps floating around the Web--here are some I've looked at recently.

Serious Sewing has reviews of her favorite sewing machines, and I found her discussion of shopping for a serger very helpful. (I eventually went with her recommendation, vendor and all.) Her blog features a discussion of a favorite topic of mine: How to Get Rid of Large Amounts of Fabric Scraps.
This sent me to Scrap Happy--More Than 50 Fabric Scraps & Remnant Ideas Plus Free Patterns. I found inspiration for several small projects from this list, and a bunch of interesting blogs to peruse.
One of those interesting blogs sent me to Scrap User's System!, a great article about a serious quilter's approach to organizing and managing her extensive collection of small "samples" of quilting cottons. She cuts her scraps into ready-to-use bits whenever feasible.

A Final Bobcat Picture

2011-02-10T14:39:00.000-05:00

Just about the time we got the game camera aimed well, the flash developed problems. This is probably the last night-time bobcat picture we'll get. Oh well--it was fun while it lasted.

Crochet Ye Roses While Ye May

2011-02-09T19:07:00.003-05:00

I knit to create clothing, but the thing I admire about crochet is the variety of pure embellishment you can produce. I especially enjoy crochet floral motifs, like this cabbage rose, a standard feature in Irish crochet. I wanted to make some Irish crochet-style leaves to go with it, but I couldn't find a pattern in my collection.

Suzanne Thompson's Curious and Crafty Readers blog came to my rescue, with her Corrugated Leaf Tutorial. It was exactly the way to make the leaves I knew from my grandma's collection of doilies and do-dads. Poking around on Suzanne's blog, I found lots of wonderful crochet flower designs and directions. Some of them are the usual fanciful geometric shapes, but many have details that make them look like real, specific flowers--pansies, poppies, daffodils, primroses. And the leaves--ferns, palms, pine boughs. It's too cool.

She has some of these in a book: Crochet Bouquet: Easy Designs for Dozens of Flowers. It's so moderately priced at Amazon that I put it right on my wishlist. Suzanne's blog even gives you instructions for converting your copy to spiral-bound format.

Debian Wheezy--So Far, So Good

2011-02-08T18:40:00.000-05:00

This past Sunday marked the release of the new Debian stable version, 6.0, code-named "Squeeze." I've been running Squeeze testing version since May of this year, and when a Debian version moves from "stable" to "testing," a new version moves into testing. The new testing is called "Wheezy." My /etc/apt/sources.list points to "testing," rather than "squeeze," so that means that running aptitude dist-upgrade after a version-move can mean major changes, and, sometimes, major breakage of the Linux box.

I waffled around about what to do yesterday. I could point my sources.list to "squeeze," rather than "testing," so that nothing would change for a while, but the nice thing about testing is that it has newer versions of programs with the latest improvements. When I installed "testing" last year, I tried upgrading right to "unstable," (aka "Sid") which has the really latest and greatest stuff, but I wasn't able to get it working in the first couple of hours, so I just re-installed "testing." I've been reasonably happy with it (except for my intermittent "grub" troubles. (Check out the Debian sid FAQ, which is informative but mostly just funny.)

I decided to live my life on the edge, and stick with "testing," so after backing up my home directory six ways to Sunday, I just went ahead with aptitude update and aptitude dist-upgrade. It upgraded 220 packages. Expecting the worst, I rebooted, and NOTHING bad happened! Here's the really surprising thing--I did the same thing on my laptop, and nothing bad happened there either. Of course, "Wheezy" could turn on me at any moment....there's another update I'm running today. Still, so far, so good!

Marcellus Shale Extraction in West Virginia

2011-02-05T13:18:00.002-05:00

The Charleston Gazette blogs recently featured this link: The industrialization of rural West Virginia caused by the Marcellus Shale gas play. It's well worth a look. There's been some speculation on mineral rights in Pocahontas County recently, and this slideshow has some practical information on what hydrofracturing the Marcellus shale looks like from the surface.

A few years ago, Marcellus Shale gas was unrecoverable, and West Virginia was a relative backwater in the oil and gas industry. The new techniques of high-volume hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have made a sea change in all of that. The Marcellus Shale is now the second largest field of gas -- in the WORLD. It is twice the size of the gas fields in Saudi Arabia. Major oil companies like Exxon are buying up gas resources here. Conventional shallow wells that cost $300,000.00 to drill have given way to 6 to 8 horizontal wells drilled from one well site. And each horizontal well costs $3 Million or more to drill. This drilling causes an exponential increase in surface disturbance, water use and waste disposal. It also requires compressor stations and staging areas and greatly increases demands on roads and other infrastructure.

The slideshow is on the WV Surface Owners' Rights Organization (WV SORO) Website. They introduce their resources with this:

West Virginia is second only to Texas in the number of active oil and gas wells in the country. New drilling permits have more than tripled in recent years and West Virginia surface owners have very few rights to protect them from drillers unless they also own the minerals beneath their land. If you live in one of the state's oil and gas producing counties you know about the polluted streams, needless destruction of timber, lost home sites, careless road building and ruined pastures caused by drillers.

Coverstitching Over Seams--Avoid if Possible

2011-02-03T15:31:00.001-05:00

When I bought my serger, I made a point of getting one that has coverstitch capabilities. Ready-to-wear knits have lovely, flat hem stitching that stretches just the right amount and never draws up or ripples, in contrast to everything I've ever tried on a "regular" sewing machine. Here's how pretty the two-needle hem turns out on cotton interlock.

However, my serger skips stitches when coverstitching over seams. That means on two of these tee-shirts, there are skipped hem stitches at each side seam. I wouldn't normally get too excited--it's only one or two stitches. But coverstitch is a lot like chain stitch--if you give a loose thread a tug, you can pull the whole hem out in one fell swoop. I tried everything I could think of to solve this--sewing very slowly, tension adjustments, shims--but there was always at least one skipped stitch, and therefore, one place where the hem could be snagged and pulled out.

I searched the Internet for a long time before I found this handy tutorial on the Gigi Sews blog: Coverstitching over serged seams. She clips the seam at the hemline, then folds the seam edges in opposite directions. This gives you a much flatter "lump" to sew over. She claims great success with it, and I plan to try it soon.

I also went through my closet looking at ready-to-wear knit hems, and got a surprise: None of the coverstitched hems were stitched over a seam. The garment pieces were hemmed first, then assembled.

To summarize, there are two ways to handle coverstitching over hems: avoid it, by hemming before assembling, or clip the seam and fold the overlocked edges in opposite directions before hemming.

There are some fabrics where coverstitching just may not be an option. The paler yellow tee-shirt, above right, is a super-stretchy performance fabric (along the lines of Powerdry, but a different brand), and it was just about impossible to hem--you can see I gave up and finished the cuffs and bottom edge with stretch lace applied on my regular sewing machine.

My Dream of Grant Woods Pie

2011-02-02T14:34:00.000-05:00

Last week Sherry's latest batch of cool "Stuff#21" sent me on a chain of hypertext links that led me back home again, literally and symbolically. Starting close to home with Kentuckian Wendell Berry, Sherry found Berry and Bob Dylan together in a blog post at The Art of the Rural. Now, I was once a Dylan fan, and I still remember ALL the lyrics to "Highway 61 Revisited," but I fell out with Bob when I was a senior in college. I was driving south on Iowa Route 169, just outside of Adel, when "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" came on the radio. "...You just kinda wasted my precious time," Bob sang, as I'd heard him do so many times before, but this time, something dawned on me. "You whiny, self-centered S.O.B.!" I said, perhaps even aloud, as I switched off the radio. If only there were less of my own "precious time" between insight and understanding, I might have avoided some not-so-great life-choices. Still, it was a start.

As I moved from my own farm-girl epiphany to other posts at The Art of the Rural, I learned that Charlie Louvin had passed, Hamper McBee is on the You-Tubes, and there's a lady living in the "American Gothic" house, hellbent on saving the world through pie.

Beth Howard's blog is The World Needs More Pie, and of course, she's right. She says of herself:

I was born in the neighboring small town of Ottumwa, a place I never thought I'd return to because it seemed so "backwater," but now Ottumwa is where I do all my shopping, go to movies, and on the rare occasion, grab a burger at the classic 1930's diner, The Canteen in the Alley. I left Iowa to travel the world, I've lived in places including Nairobi, Stuttgart, New York and most recently Portland, Oregon. And now...Eldon, Iowa. It's like Grant Wood said, "I had to go to France to appreciate Iowa."

Now, I have a few reservations about an Iowan who calls Ottumwa, Iowa (population 25,000) a small town. Cromwell (population 120), where I went to school, is a small town. Eldon (population 1000), where the pie-evangelist lives in the house Grant Wood painted, is a small town. Ottumwa is one of the big towns on the Burlington Northern Line, which ran through My Antonia and A Lost Lady and Creston (population 7500), the semi-big town where my parents bought groceries and I went to high school. Still, she might have been addressing New Yorkers, so I'll let that slide.

Ms. Howard has a whole media empire at her The World Needs More Pie, but I'm mostly hung up on the connection in my memory between Grant Wood and pie. I did my undergraduate studies at Iowa State University, which was adorned with quite a bit of WPA art. The library had a set of Grant Wood murals. I thought they were spectacular and strange, and I spent quite a bit of time looking at them, particularly the Agricultural Arts and Home Economics Arts panels. I have a vivid memory of a huge, columnar woman wearing a perfectly smooth gingham apron in a kitchen, with a spherical cooked fowl and a geometrical pie on a table. However, a look at the Web page Grant Woods murals at ISU shows no such image of a Grant Woods-painted pie. The columnar apron is there alright, but I guess I hallucinated the turkey and pie. (The dorm food was really bad.)

I guess it took Beth Howard to complete my dream of Grant Woods pie.

Poetry Feast for St. Bridgid--Shining from Shook Foil

2011-02-01T15:00:00.001-05:00

It's time for the Sixth Annual Bridgid Poetry Feast. There's a Facebook page for it, but I'm cranky about Facebook and won't join, so I'm just sprinkling links around a bit.

Actually, among the blogs I read, most days are poetry days, and Dave Bonta and Sherry Chandler frequently offer poetics as well as poetry. Recently, Dave explained and commented on a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Poetry: a vital first step, and Sherry followed up.

I'm a Gerard Manley Hopkins fan, and, as this is public domain, I'm able to quote a full text here with no worries. On a day of grey skies and white snow, I guess I'm hankering after "shining from shook foil."

God's Grandeur (1877)
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89)

The world is charged with the grandeur of God. 
  It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; 
  It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil 
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? 
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;         
  And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; 
  And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil 
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. 
 
And for all this, nature is never spent; 
  There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;         
And though the last lights off the black West went 
  Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-- 
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent 
  World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

More Game Camera Surprises--Owl and Pussycat

2011-01-31T15:50:00.000-05:00

We continue to experiment with positioning the gamecamera for flash on snow. Saturday and Sunday nights saw some interesting activity. On Saturday, a raccoon and skunk visited early in the evening. Around 9:45, this Barred Owl dropped in and stayed for more than half an hour. It was too far away from the camera for a good picture, but I included these because I didn't know owls scavenged on carrion, and I wanted to show proof.

A gray fox passed through around 3 am.

Sunday, we tried half-covering the flash with electrical tape, and this gave better pictures. We had a possum, a gray fox, and two different racoons, but the bobcat really obliged us with some close passes by the camera. This is probably why Princess has been staying on the porch in the evenings.

Update-grub, and Mysterious Error Messages

2011-01-30T09:50:00.008-05:00

I ran the Squeeze upgrades on my desktop machine Saturday morning, and noticed that a grub update was on the list. I've had enough trouble with grub updates lately to know that it was time to back up my data files before I went any further. After the backups, I ran aptitude dist-upgrade, and restarted the machine. (Why wait for trouble to come to me? I'll just go meet trouble.)

Although grub was there and looked OK, it sent me straight into a kernel panic, even in recovery mode. I pulled out my net install disk and booted into "Rescue Mode," asked for a terminal, and ran update-grub. A reboot sent me back to a kernel panic, so I re-rebooted into recovery mode, which worked this time. I ran update-grub again, and rebooted. This time, the system booted, albeit very slowly, and with lots of error messages concerning ata3.00. I googled these error messages, and found some potentially useful links.

There's one message I always get at start up, and whenever I "wake up" my desktop computer: ata3.00: softreset failed (device not ready). This is apparently common among AMD64 Linux kernels, and I've been ignoring it successfully. I found out some interesting things about it.

Some of my error messages might have been indicating a problem with the physical hard drive, or its connectors. I suspected this wasn't my problem, but I wasn't having much luck looking for software solutions. Monitoring Hard Drive Health clued me into S.M.A.R.T., which can let you know if your hard drive is in trouble before it gives up altogether. I installed the Debian smartmontools package, and it told me the hard drive was apparently OK.

In some forum somewhere, I read that SATA cables were more likely to cause error messages than hard drives. I was running out of things to try, so I shut my computer down, let it stand for half an hour, and opened it up. All I did was blow the dust out, and check to see if the SATA cable was plugged in good and tight on the mother board and the hard drive. It seemed fine. The first computer I ever owned always went belly-up every time I moved it, or even bumped it. The fix was to open the case and jiggle all the cables a little bit. I did that this time, too. Call it superstition if you like.

After I put things back together and powered up, the little darlin' booted right up with nary an error message, and has been running like a top ever since. I really hate it when I don't know what was wrong, or why it's running now. Did something reset while it was powered down? Did jiggling the cables do the trick? Was it dust? And what's with all the update-grub/reboot iterations? Why do I always have to do that over and over again? And why does none of this ever happen with my Linux laptop?

While I don't have answers to these questions, here are some links where I learned something.

Libata error messages at the "Linux ATA Wiki" provides translations of most of the error messages I've been getting.
Soft Reset Failed (Device Not Ready) error upon installing Ubuntu, Please help! In my case, "not to worry."
Is this startup error important: ata1: softreset failed (device not ready). I always get this error at startup, and when "waking up" the computer. This is evidently to be expected on AMD64 systems.
Softreset failed (device not ready) More "not to worry" for my situation
Re: Hard Drive Error : ata3.00: status: { DRDY ERR }. This forum thread discusses the possibility that there might be a hardware problem, either with my hard drive or SATA cable.
Monitoring Hard Drive Health. Informative and well-written.

A Dialectic Between Bunnies

2011-01-29T16:02:00.003-05:00

These videos made me laugh really hard. I have no idea why this amuses me, but I'm having Linux trouble today, can't figure it out, and haven't come up with a real blog post yet. Perhaps it's just fun to hear cartoon animals say "Derrida."

In my grad school experience, the faculty told us that we needed to be deep scientific thinkers with a "feel for the organism" and cold, calculating political animals with no regard for the truth. In fact, the same professor might tell you "profound, broad-ranging knowledge" on Monday and "political animal" on Tuesday, repeating as necessary until you ultimately loathe your research, your department, and all of academe. Guess you have that in the philosophy department too.

Rassling With Lounge Wear

2011-01-28T16:50:00.000-05:00

Once I got the hang of sewing overlock seams with my new serger, I launched into trying to sew on tricky fabrics. I have a stack of odd-ball fleece fabrics (from a Wazoodle.com grab bag deal several years ago), and I've never had great success sewing flat seams with fleece, so I decided to serge-sew a "learning experience" bathrobe.

I've had KwikSew 2325 in my pattern box for years without trying it. The pattern envelope shows a robe made up in some sort of light-weight woven, trimmed with sheer or lace. To quote the envelope: We suggest silk, silk like fabrics, crepe de chine, charmeuse, batiste or eyelet. It's definitely not designed for stretch fleece, and yet, bathrobes don't differ that much in their basic shape--minimally-shaped armhole scythe, simple sleeve cap, dropped shoulders, straight side seams. I thought I'd give it a try--after all, the fleece I'm using was a bargain-basement buy.

Before I started cutting, I decided to alter the pattern. Even though there was plenty of wearing ease for me in the robe pattern, I made a full-bust adjustment anyway. On oversized ready-to-wear such as big tee-shirts and men's shirts, even thought there's ample wearing ease, the shirt neckline crawls up under my chin in front and the shoulder seams creep down my back. It's quite annoying, and I didn't want to have to wrestle my bathrobe all the time--lounge wear is for relaxing, isn't it?

A couple of years ago, I posted some links on the full bust alteration, but my favorite Web pages are no longer available. I have them squirreled away on my hard drive, but I'm not sure it would be legal or sporting of me to post them here. Instead, I've found these new "how-to's" for your sewing pleasure:

Rather than add a side bust dart to a bathrobe, I decided it would look better if the extra fullness went to the shoulder seam. Beth at The Rusty Bobbin has a dandy tutorial: How to Rotate a Bust Dart.

After all that fiddling with the pattern, laying it out was a quick process. At this point, I also added about 5 inches in length to the front and back, and also to the sleeves. I planned to omit the lacy sleeve trim, and I thought a warm fleecy robe shouldn't be too short. Cutting it out and sewing it up on the serger took much less time than getting the pattern ready.

Seams sewn in fleece on a regular sewing machine always get ripply for me, but it wasn't hard to adjust the serger so that I got nice flat seams. I used a four-stitch mock-safety stitch.

After all that fussing, I was very pleased with the fit. The robe does not creep up in front or down in back. I'd hoped to gather the extra fullness in the front shoulder, but the thick fabric just wouldn't gather. I settled for a big pleat instead.

I spent quite a while trying to decide how to edge and hem the robe. The pattern called for a sewn-on binding, but I thought it would be better without the added bulk. The raw edges of fleece don't ravel, but they didn't look quite right all on their own. I experimented for a while with different serger edge finishes, and settled on a two-thread rolled hem, using wooly nylon in the bottom looper. It looked nice and flat and inconspicuous on the scraps I tested, but when I started stitching on the actual robe, it began to curl and ripple a bit. I considered cutting off the offending hem finish, but I decided to call it a decorative edging instead, and just stitched all the way around all the raw edges.

I think I'll make a lightweight summer robe from this pattern sometime this year. It's a very versatile pattern--if I find some nice firm flannel, I'll probably use it to make my husband a robe. (I'll omit the full bust adjustment in his case.)

State of the Sumac--January 2011

2011-01-27T16:51:00.001-05:00

Here's my latest post for The Tree Year. (I think Das Baumjahr has a better ring to it...I may switch.)

The sun came out to make the trees sparkle this afternoon, so I thought it would be a good time to document the State of the Sumac for January, 2011. This particular stag horn sumac has its lowest fruits 12 or 15 feet off the ground, and it's at the bottom of a snowy, icy, steep hill, so the best I can do today is this full-length portrait, complete with plenty of snow-coated red fruit clusters.

Like Sherry's dad, folks around here call this small tree/large shrub "shoe-make." They regard "sumac" as an affectation. It really isn't a case of me "getting above my raisin'" though, because my raising on the prairie didn't include this peculiar tree. I only know its name from field guides and botany classes.

This smaller, distressed sumac has been growing by an abandoned gate for many years, but it hasn't gotten more than 15 feet high. It has some lovely lichens, and I can get a bit closer to those peculiar clusters of fuzzy red sumac fruits.

Here you can see that the birds have been working on the dried fruits. One of the clusters is picked nearly clean.

Utilitarian Crochet Practice

2011-01-26T14:43:00.000-05:00

I keep plugging away at basic crochet skills. For me, the key to good knitting skills was just to knit lots and lots and lots of stitches. I'm assuming that the same will hold true for crochet, but I have a lot of stitches to go. I'm using cotton yarn and thread from my collection of leftovers and bargin bin shopping, and my projects are small, funtional items that I believe I'll use. This placemat is mostly practice in making even double crochet stitches--the pretty cotton yarns are all that give it spice.

The black yarn in this potholder is a cotton/wool blend. Until recently, it was a sweater I didn't enjoy wearing. It has good insulating properties, and I hope I'll enjoy it more as a potholder.

Wave and Box Socks

2011-01-25T12:40:00.001-05:00

OK, this is the fifth and final pair of socks in my series of "Disappointing Silk/Wool Yarns by Rowan." This color work pattern allowed me to use nearly all the remaining "Silkstones" silk/wool blend. The silk in that discontinued yarn consists of short, hard-to-spin fibers. They add some bulk and warmth to the yarn, but the main thing they do is take dyes beautifully. That's the lure that hooked me into buying the yarn in the first place. I'm a sucker for pretty colors.

These socks display a slip-stitch pattern that's fascinated me for a long time. It appears in Barbara G. Walker's A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns on page 44 (in my edition, anyway). She calls it "Wave and Box Stitch." Knitted in a springy yarn, the stripey parts of the design spread out in the middle, and are drawn up by the boxy bits. This silk yarn doesn't play up the "wavy" part of the pattern, but it was fun to knit.

"Wave and Box Stitch" is confusing to knit flat, and the instructions in A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns require that you use double-pointed or circular needles, and sometimes there will be two consecutive rows on the right side or two consecutive rows on the wrong side. But if you work it in the round, the instructions are super-simple, and easily explained.

Here, "Color A" is the color the "boxes" will be (in the case of my socks, the medium blue), and "Color B" is the color of the stripes (either white or navy on my socks).

Multiple of 10 stitches.
Odd-numbered rows are knitted with Color A.
Even-numbered rows are knitted with Color B.
Row 1 (and all odd-numbered rows): Color A, *Knit 10*
Row 2: Color B, *K10.*
Row 4, 6, 8: Color B, *slip 3 st, K7.*
Row 10: Color B,*K10.*
Rows 12, 14, 16, Color B, *K3, slip 3, K4*

Knitted Fuchsia Flowers in Ivory Silk

2011-01-24T13:59:00.001-05:00

These socks are the fourth pair in my series of "Disappointing Silk/Wool Yarns by Rowan." By that, I don't mean the socks are disappointing, just that the silk/wool blends were not pleasant to knit. The heathery blue yarns were known as "Grainy Silk," and the solid colors (seen above and here) were "Silkstones." They looked luscious in the skeins, but the strands break easily and are inelastic in the knitting. In the wearing, they stretch out and don't spring back, making for slouchy socks. Fortunately, the silk/wool blend is warm and toasty to wear, and I don't mind slouchy socks.
The yarn is just too string-like for Fair Isle patterns, twist-stitch patterns, cable patterns, or any of my other sock-knitting preferences. This time, I thought I would try a bit of open-work, and find out whether I like wearing lacy socks.
The pattern I went with is from Barbara G. Walker's A Treasury of Knitting Patterns. It's found in her "Patterns Made with Yarn-Over Stitches" Chapter (page 149 in my edition), and it's called "Fuchsia Pattern." I'm assuming it's after the lovely pendant flowers, not the color.
If I were naming the pattern, I'd be inclined to call it Virginia Bluebells, but, according to Ms. Walker: This is a popular pattern in traditional knitting, known in some form or another throughout Europe. This particular version is German. Perhaps that is reason enough to name it after a flower that is itself named after a Bavarian botanist, Leonhart Fuchs.
In any case, the pattern is easy and makes a pretty ribbing. I will soon know whether I like wearing socks knit with sizable yarn-over "holes."

More Bobcat Visits

2011-01-23T18:28:00.001-05:00

A few nights ago, the SD card popped out of the game camera, and we thought we didn't get any pictures. However, the built-in drive in the game camera told a different story.

The racoon didn't linger long under the bobcat's spooky gaze. Sherry's racoon had a more pleasant evening, I think.

Last night, we tried moving the camera farther away from the carcass to avoid wash-out effect of too much flash. The color is a little better, and you can see in our kitchen window.

"Red-eye removal" isn't an option here.

A Bobcat Visit

2011-01-21T10:53:00.000-05:00

We don't have the knack for game camera pictures in the snow yet, but we're working on it. This bobcat is last night's visitor to deer season's leftovers.

There's a little pale spot at the base of a tree in the second photo. It's of the same quality as a Bigfoot picture, but I think I see a pair of eyes:

Bobcat number two?

Ice Storm, Iowa, 1954

2011-01-20T12:40:00.000-05:00

Here are more surprises from my mom's box of Kodachrome slides. 1954 is a guess--my parents lived in this house from about 1952 to 1956. You can see why southwestern Iowa winters are so hard on trees.

How to Massage Your Possum

2011-01-19T15:22:00.004-05:00

Proper Opossum Massage:

Because you wouldn't want to do it wrong.

via Southern Rockies Nature Blog, who usually is much more serious than this.

Cromwell Marching Band, White Cat, and Oldsmobile

2011-01-18T17:21:00.002-05:00

I vividly remember what the Cromwell Band uniform smelled like, although I cannot describe it now any more than I could then. The cat does not appear well pleased by it either. I do not remember my flute being that large in relation to my arms. Below, the band is assembling for the 1963 Thanksgiving parade. These slides were a surprise--I don't remember Mom taking these pictures.

Weather Report

2011-01-17T17:10:00.002-05:00

We've had a little of everything today--sunshine, melting icicles, clouds, and now more snow. A complete winter weather sampler.

MLK in PPT

2011-01-17T11:28:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I find work teaching people to use Microsoft Office components. Sadly, I am responsible for introducing a few people to the use of PowerPoint. I usually tell them, "A gentleman is someone who knows how to use PowerPoint, but doesn't." However, this satirical example will make the point more effectively: "I have an action item."

N.B. I downloaded the entire presentation, and found it can be opened with Open Office, and also viewed in outline form.

2011: The Year In Trees

2011-01-16T14:35:00.002-05:00

Marvin and Sherry clued me in to this interesting project, The Tree Year. Here's how it works:

How to start:

Pick a tree – either one you like a lot or one that you see every day on your way to work or that happens to live on your balcony.

Observe it: every day or once a week or less. What grabs your attention? What kind of animals are and what kind of plants grow on it?

Write about your observation, make sketches or take photographs and share it with us.

Now, I could get totally hung up at step 1, "Pick a tree." I am overwhelmed by my choices here on Droop Mountain. I was feeling a little panicky about picking a "good one." And what if my tree blew down in a high wind, or became firewood? However, the FAQ's inform me that we can "change the project idea [so] that it fits you." In fact, I see on the Tree Year site that Marvin has picked both a persimmon tree and a sweet gum tree.

Sherry has chosen a dogwood, another awesome tree. Before all the "good" trees are taken, I'm gonna call Staghorn Sumac! There's a stand here close to the house, and it does so many interesting things. Check these lichens on a sumac branch (from a post here in February, 2009). I'll probably never get a photograph of the pileated woodpeckers eating sumac fruits, but they do dine there regularly.

Thanks, Marvin and Sherry, for alerting me to this, and thanks to The Tree Year for the idea.

The Violets Bear It Away

2011-01-12T16:32:00.004-05:00

Here's a picture of my grandmother, Florence Williamson Hunt, the postcard collector in my family. The postcard album I've been using to decorate my holiday postings for the last few years is something Florence put together while living with her parents on their farm, prior to her marriage in her early 30's. In this photograph, she's moved to town (Creston), widowed, and in her 70's.

Grandma had an extensive flower garden at "the house in town," and she had a large collection of African violets on her window sills. As a little girl, I fixated on these flowers with fuzzy foliage, and I've tried to grow them myself with limited success.

Fortunately, the office and bedroom in our new house have plenty of winter sunlight, and my current crop of African violets has been blooming quite cheerfully. I have Grandma's crocheted table toppers scattered among the houseplants.

A Glimpse of the Past, and Command Line Adventures

2011-01-07T17:41:00.004-05:00

Kodachrome slide from 1951 or 1952. My Aunt Verla, Uncle Bill, and cousins Cathy, Bobby, and Denny. Aren't they cute?

The last few days I've been scanning a box of old Kodachrome slides my mom shot with her spiffy Exacta 35mm camera in the early 1950's. It's the camera I fell in love with as a teenager, using black and white film. A few years ago, I sold the camera on Ebay to a collector in Germany, sort of a photographic repatriation.

I've never seen these images before--they were something Mom always told me she'd show me someday, but it never happened, and it was purely by chance that I found and kept the metal slide box when I emptied her house in 1996.

It's sort of spooky to see images from her life long before she was my mother. In fact I was so focused on this glimpse into her life that I didn't notice I was scanning the images in a format my photo editing software doesn't much like. I want to print some of these pictures to send my cousins (Do you suppose they know how cute they were?), so I need to convert them to a different file format in batch mode.

Fortunately, I have ImageMagick on my Linux box already, and it has awesome command line tools (about which I know very little, so far). I do know how to convert a file format:


rebecca@hecate:~/Moms_slides$ convert covered_bridge.tiff covered_bridge.jpg

Of course, I need to do batches of convert. I could read the ImageMagick documentation (but if that were easy, I would have done it years ago). Or, I could make an executable file of convert commands, and run it. There was a time when I wrote sed and awk scripts in my sleep (I really did--I dreamed about shell scripts.) I was afraid I couldn't remember, but a little help.txt file in an archived directory jogged my memory, and I was back in business directly.

In the spirit of my help.txt files, where I kept a record of how I did whatever needed doing, here's how I converted a big pile of tiff image files to png image files.

rebecca@hecate:~/Pictures/Moms_slides$ ls *.tiff|
awk '{print "convert "$1, $1".png"}'|
sed s/.tiff.png/.png/ >temp
rebecca@hecate:~/Pictures/Moms_slides$ chmod +x temp
rebecca@hecate:~/Pictures/Moms_slides$ ./temp

And here's what the executable file looks like:

rebecca@hecate:~/Pictures/Moms_slides$ head temp
convert 5kids_easter2.tiff 5kids_easter2.png
convert 5kids_easter.tiff 5kids_easter.png
convert 5kids_pinecones.tiff 5kids_pinecones.png
convert 5kids_xmas.tiff 5kids_xmas.png
convert bill1.tiff bill1.png
convert bill2.tiff bill2.png
convert bill_junglegym.tiff bill_junglegym.png
convert bobby_blocks.tiff bobby_blocks.png
convert bobby_easter.tiff bobby_easter.png
convert bobby_junglegym.tiff bobby_junglegym.png

It took a lot longer to write up this help file than it did to convert 75 images to a format I can send to my printer. (For what it's worth, my photo editing software can read tiff files, just not the ones created by Xsane, the scanner software I use.)

Here are some Web resources on sed and awk that I wish had existed when I was learning those wonderful programs:

Sed - An Introduction and Tutorial Awk Table of Contents. This is way more than I ever tried to do with awk. It's kind of inspiring....
Linux UNIX Shell Command To Make Creat File Executable. My shell flavor is just a little different than the Unix I learned on, so I needed some help. Found it here.

Why Don't I Like White Noise?

2011-01-05T17:55:00.003-05:00

Sometimes I just feel perplexed by modern novels of the sort the New York Times reviews--the type that are chosen for literary prizes and taught in undergraduate literature classes. I'm not alone in this:

I'm going to wrestle once again with literary fiction, and ask once again what it is, and how it differs from other fiction, and why it is considered fine art, and why it is regarded as superior to other fiction, and why academics embrace it and teach it but won't teach popular fiction....I can't even get any agreed-upon definition of literary fiction. Its proponents usually tell me they know it when they see it, and are sure it is superior to popular fiction, but can't say why.

This is from a recent blog post by Richard S. Wheeler. I'm just a gal reading books in her woodland cabin (I do have a B.S. in English, but I spent most of my class time on "The Fairy Queen" and "Paradise Lost," with nothing more recent than George Eliot in my curriculum.) but Mr. Wheeler is a much-published novelist with some interesting insights, so I was surprised to find him in my same boat.

Sometimes I can see why a writer is admired, even if I can't bring myself to join in. John Updike's prose really impresses me--his descriptions of place and mood are vivid and I remember them years later, even though I could care less how Rabbit feels, or what happens to him. It's the same with Cormac McCarthy--that's mighty fine prose, but why are you telling me this?

I think it might be that I am not the intended audience for these sorts of books. Updike and McCarthy seem pretty concerned with what it means to be a man. That's probably not as important a topic to me as it is to them, although Ralph Ellison and Joseph Conrad and Feodor Dostoevsky engaged my interest in that same topic, and Franz Kafka drew me into what it means to stop being a man (and being a big bug instead).

Don Dilillo is a highly-regarded writer that I have avoided. A few months ago I decided to try again, and perhaps understand why I didn't connect with him. I got a copy of White Noise from my book trading site and read it through. If it hadn't been awarded the 1985 National Book Award, I wouldn't have gone past the first 50 pages. I understood it to be a satire on modern American society, including pop culture, consumerism, science, and medicine. These things are so often satirized that I didn't find much humor in this book--I'd heard these jokes before.

Maybe I would have been more amused if I'd read the book 25 years ago, I thought. I spent some time reading literary criticism on the Web, and found that the book is still assigned reading for many undergraduate classes, still the subject of literary criticism. (For example, Don Delillo's White noise: a reader's guide by Leonard Orr generously makes large chunks of text available on Google Books.) The folks who admire Delillo still like White Noise, so that's probably not my problem.

I think the reason I fail as Delillo's reader is my personal history as a science fiction reader, a disgruntled graduate student, an environmental scientist, a teacher of nursing students. Long before White Noise came out, I'd read several Philip K. Dick novels, especially The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. More distopian and more outrageous than White Noise, Philip K. Dick's genre fiction stole its thunder, at least for me. It seems to be fashionable to take Dick's fiction seriously these days, but back when I read it, in the late 70's, it was just some really weird stuff that most sci fi fans didn't much like.

The most helpful Don Delillo Web resource I found was Curt Gardner's Don DeLillo's America - A Don DeLillo Site. He has links to many interviews with, and essays by Don Delillo, as well as a bibliography and reviews both positive and negative. I found Mr. Delillo's essays (indexed in Don Dilillo on Writing) interesting and thoughtful, which made me particularly sorry I fail as his fan. This analysis of his novels was particularly helpful to me: What to Read: The brilliant. The pretty unbelievably good. The rough going. The completely avoidable. Our guide to the DeLillo oeuvre. Of White Noise, it says: "If you're going to like DeLillo, this is the book that will make it happen." I guess it's not going to happen, and maybe it just comes down to liking it, or not liking it.

Crochet Foundation Row and More Practice

2011-01-04T17:20:00.000-05:00

My adventures in crochet are still mostly "skills-building," rather than inspired by projects. I made this small, buttoned purse to hold a lavender sachet in my sock drawer. The goal here was to get more practice working with inelastic thread and smallish steel hooks. I just made up the pattern as I went along, as you can probably guess. The shell-and-picot embellishments I added at the end are heavy and out of scale with the bag, but it's going to spend most of its time in a dark dresser drawer. Oh well.

My goal is to crochet with fine thread, like that used in this table topper from my grandma's collection of crocheted dresser scarves, tablecloths, and doilies.

Besides simple practice, I did learn a new technique with this project--the crochet foundation row, a project starter that skips the foundation chain. There are dozens of tutorials on YouTube, but for those of us who prefer written directions, the best explanation I've found is this: Tutorial: Foundation Single Crochet: "You can use foundation crochet to determine the size of a row when it's not set because the stitches are true-to-size unlike a chain, which is impossible to use as a row-length gauge." Futuregirl.com provides excellent written directions, and a brief history of the technique. I found a helpful forum discussion, too: In praise of the single crochet foundation row.

Pincushion of My Ancestors, Slipcovered and Starched

2011-01-03T19:38:00.001-05:00

This pincushion has been on my to-repair list for years. In fact, I believe it was on my mother's to-repair list throughout my childhood, and may have been on my grandma's to-repair list before that.

Although my mom kept it with her sewing gear, it's not that sort of pincushion. It was made to sit on a lady's dresser, and to be stuck full of hatpins and the sorts of pins they used to fasten their apron tops to their dress bodice-fronts.

This particular pincushion was handmade at home, most likely as a gift. I believe it dates from my grandma's post-card collecting days, from around 1900 to 1915. (After she was grown up, but before she was married with kids.) The body of the cushion was machine- and hand-sewn of pink cotton sateen, and stuffed full of sawdust. The decorative cover is crocheted of very fine cotton thread. I washed it and starched it with spray starch, but I'll probably look for some stiffer starch to make the ruffles stand up better.

I had originally planned to make a new cushion to display the crocheted cover, but I had this pretty blue silk left over from re-covering a lamp shade. (The silk was salvaged from a favorite shirt.) It's a match for my bedroom walls, and it was a quick project to simply "slip-cover" the original cushion and pull the crocheted cover over the top.

Do you suppose crossing something off my late mother's "to-do" list has some sort of karmic significance beyond just finishing a sewing project?

Happy New Year, 1911

2011-01-01T09:00:00.002-05:00

"With Best New Year's Wishes--1911." The sentiment hasn't changed much in 100 years, with a four-leafed clover for luck. This card is addressed to "Miss F. Williamson, Williamson [the post office was in the store her uncles owned], Adams County, Iowa" and postmarked "St. Paul, MINNESOTA, Jan. 31, 1911, 2 pm." The message reads "Dear Florence, I wish you a Happy New Year. I am going to spend New Year's Eve skating. From Your Friend, Edna C."

A New Year Thought--3D Technology in 1913

2010-12-31T17:26:00.002-05:00

"A New Year Thought and Wish" features a garland surrounding a verse: "To greet you now, kind words I send, and wish 'A Happy New Year, Friend.'" The leaves and stems of the garland are silvery, and the card has a strange texture that makes the leaf surfaces seem to "pop out" at the viewer. The postmark is "January 10, 1913, Des Moines, Iowa," and it is addressed to "Miss Florence Williamson, Prescott, Iowa, RR 1." I can't read the signature, but the message reads "How are you all? We are in usual health. Having a big poultry show. We heard some of you people were in Des Moines a while ago. That is not the way to treat your friends. A Happy Year to all."

Merry Thoughts (With Wishbone and Pansies)

2010-12-30T15:02:00.002-05:00

"Merry Thoughts--New Year's Greeting." It's another floral holiday card, this time with a golden good luck wishbone. The year is unreadable on this card, but it's addressed to "Mr. W. A. Williamson, Prescott, Iowa" and postmarked "Northeast Pennsylvania, December 28, 6 pm." The message is "Wishing you all a glad New Year--Maggie." I believe that would have been my great-grandfather's sister. I hope we all enjoy merry thoughts in the new year, and pansies too.

Happy Vintage New Year

2010-12-29T20:26:00.002-05:00

My grandma's postcard album has more New Year's greetings than Christmas cards. I don't know if this represents personal preference or something cultural. Her father was from Scotland, and several of the cards have Hogmanay references. This card is just pretty and glittery, and too fragile to keep its glitter through the mail. It must have been hand delivered, for here is the back:

My Linux Year in Review

2010-12-28T18:37:00.002-05:00

I haven't chronicled my Linux adventures since attempting to upgrade to Debian testing back in January. I depend on my blog to keep track of my Linux trials and tribulations in case I have to figure out later how I fixed (or messed up) some recurring problem. In January the update path from Debian Lenny to Debian Squeeze just wouldn't work on my hardware. After a couple of days of trying, I installed the latest Kubuntu and called it "good enough for now."

As spring progressed, I had continuing "challenges" using Kubuntu 9.10. Desktop compositing in KDE didn't work at first, then I got it going, then it gave up again. OpenOffice crashed consistently until I replaced the package openoffice.org-kde with openoffice.org-gtk.

The Ubuntu update process seemed too "pushy," with less user control than I was used to. As it updated Xorg and drivers, I began to have the sorts of problems with Kubuntu that had snagged the Debian stable-to-testing update process. Eventually, the update process removed the sound card driver and replaced it with one that didn't work at all. So I had flaky video, and no sound at all.

I tried a clean install of the next Kubuntu version, 10, but I still had no sound and video problems. By this time, I was really sick of KDE 4.4. The eye-candy was cute, but it really didn't add anything to my work process--in fact, it was mostly a distraction from productive work. Clearly, it was time for another shot at Debian testing. This time, the netinstall disk worked without a hitch, and I had Squeeze up and running in short order.

I didn't even bother to install KDE--I've just used Gnome, the Debian default desktop. I depend on several KDE-based programs, but I installed them with all the KDE libraries and programs they needed, and they have worked just fine.

This summer, I finally broke down and bought a laptop to use at my collection of part-time jobs. I teach college classes on Microsoft Office and Windows, and it became more and more burdensome without regular access to a Windows box. I originally planned to buy the Windows OS and make my desktop a dual boot machine, but that was just about as expensive as buying a laptop with Windows 7 already installed.

Turns out I don't hate Windows 7 nearly as much as XP or Vista (although I don't like it as well as 3.1, which let me use DOS whenever I got frustrated). The cherry on top was setting up my laptop to dual boot with Linux and Windows 7. I followed a tutorial from an Ubuntu group for setting up a dual boot. It was a tutorial for dummies in that it didn't explain what the various steps were doing, it just said "Do this. Now, do that." It worked and it didn't hurt my head, but now I wish I'd understood what I was doing.

Of course, I installed Debian on the laptop, not Ubuntu. (I don't follow instructions, even for dummies.) The only hitch I encountered was that after I ran an update on Windows 7, the boot loader was messed up. I was able to fix it by running the Debian netinstall disk I'd made, using "rescue mode." I reinstalled grub (the boot loader), and ran the command "grub-update."

It's probably lucky for me that I had that problem then, because this week, after running Debian testing updates on my desktop, I got a kernel panic upon rebooting. I reinstalled grub (the new, improved version, evidently), ran grub-update, and, after about 4 reboot attempts, it's back in business. I'm not sure why I had to reboot so many times before it worked, but that's what happened with the laptop, too.

Now I have a laptop, a working Windows machine, and no more classes to teach. I hope I can scare something up before my Windows OS and software are obsolete.

Little Sock Prints in the Snow

2010-12-27T17:30:00.003-05:00

I got to knit someone else a pair of socks for Christmas! (I am not surrounded by sock petitioners, and I hesitate to force unwanted hand knits on people who prefer to toss cheap cotton socks in the washer and dryer and trash basket.)

This time, a durable pair of heavy wool socks (in a manly color) were required for rubber work boots in cold weather. I made these from a single four-ounce skein of Germantown wool--my favorite for warm utility wear. I knitted the heels and feet holding a single strand of wool and a strand of wooly nylon, and I knitted them tightly, as you can see from the way the ribbing compresses itself. I knocked these out in three evenings, and it was really fun to finish something so quickly.

Christmas Greetings to My Friends (1912)

2010-12-25T17:41:00.004-05:00

A particularly appropriate message--"Christmas Greetings to My Friend." This one is addressed to my grandma, Miss Florence Williamson, Route 3, Prescott, Iowa, and postmarked "Creston, Iowa, December 24, 1912." The message reads "How are you? It seems like years since I seen you. I have so much I want to tell you. You want to come down and see our new piano before it gets old. It does not seem like last Xmas, does it? We expect to be up New Years Night start New Years right. Come down soon. With love as ever, your friend, Mary B."

Periwinkles for Christmas

2010-12-24T16:21:00.003-05:00

I don't know whether periwinkle flowers are traditionally associated with Christmas, but the floral holiday cards in my grandma's collection are favorites of mine. This one is postmarked "Bridgewater, IOWA", and reads "From your Cousin Margaret. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year."

Inquiry Concerning the Christmas Goose, 1908

2010-12-21T18:25:00.002-05:00

Here's another postcard addressed to my grandma's mother, Agnes Williamson, postmarked Des Moines, Iowa, December 22, 1908. I can't make out the signature, but the message begins with business: "Are you going to have one of Florence's geese for dinner? I would like a piece."

Risque Christmas Cards, 1910

2010-12-20T17:33:00.002-05:00

These two cards are not addressed to my grandma, but to her parents. They're both postmarked Dec. 22, 1910, and addressed to Prescott, Iowa. "Under the Mistletoe" is addressed to Mr. W. A. Williamson (my great-grandfather, born in Morayshire) and the hadwritten message reads "Here's to the man, braw and gay, That would take a wee sip on New Year's Day." The smoochy picture below is addressed to Mrs. W. A. Williamson and says simply, "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year." They're both signed "Agnes," and I believe that would have been Agnes Moore, school chum of my great-grandma (Agnes Williamson). I believe my mother (Agnes) was named after both those ladies.

Finishing (and Refinishing) Projects at Year's End

2010-12-17T16:56:00.002-05:00

I'm not sure what spurred my current obsession with finishing, repairing, sorting, and putting away. Maybe it's been concern to finish things "before the snow flies." Maybe it's wrapping up projects before the year's end. Maybe the new house has inspired my inner "Becky HomeEcky." I hope it's not a sign I'm fixin' to die!

Whatever the explanation, I've been working on projects I've been meaning to get to for years. Here's a piece of furniture I found in the trash in Manhattan during the first Reagan administration. Although it wasn't damaged, its varnish was crazed and blackened, and its drawer pulls had been removed. I had some wooden drawer pulls I'd collected at my local landfill, and it went straight to my bedroom.

I salvaged quite a bit of furniture over the years, repaired and refinished most of it, but this item languished. It just didn't look that bad. About 10 years ago, I bought fancy brass drawer pulls for it, but postponed refinishing indefinitely.

During that last unexpected spell of warm weather in November, I hauled it out in the yard and stripped off the old varnish. I was really surprised by what was underneath! A bit of walnut colored stain and some tung oil, and it's quite pretty.

Silk Socks--Navy Pennants

2010-11-30T15:49:00.002-05:00

Here are the latest socks from my collection of disappointing silk skeins. In the early 1990's I found several discounted skeins of "Grainy Silk," from Rowan yarns. They formed a series of different intensities of indigo dye, and I thought surely they'd make a lovely, subtly-shaded Fair Isles sweater vest. I swatched and swatched, but the yarn has no elasticity at all, and stranded knitting looked and felt quite dreadful.

Cables and twist-stitch patterns were equally unsuccessful. The only viable choice for patterning seems to be knit-purl patterns. I fell back on this "Pennants" pattern, which behaves as a ribbing, making the socks a little more flexible.

The afternoon sun makes the socks look black, but these skeins were actually the darkest of the indigo series.

Label 'em Up, and Move 'em Out

2010-11-28T17:39:00.005-05:00

It's come to my attention that my storage space is finite, the most crowded corners being occupied by fabric and fiber. With this in mind, I gathered up my odd skeins of hand spun wool yarns, priced them as if for a yard sale, and took them to a local shopkeeper. Of course, yarn needs a pretty label to make it look "real," so I spent an afternoon experimenting with the sidebar photograph I call "The View from Droop Mountain."

I printed this on pastel card stock, and wrote fiber content and care directions on the back. I think it looks OK.

More Serger Practice, and a Grouse

2010-11-27T16:52:00.003-05:00

I've become a bit more adventurous in my serger sewing. The last batch of tee-shirts were all sewn of cotton jersey, using a four-thread overlock stitch with just original "neutral" factory settings. This batch features different sorts of knits, including a thermal knit shirt and a nightgown (simply a knee-length tee-shirt, but with stretch lace instead of ribbing).

Princess, our yellow cat, interrupted this clothesline photo session by flushing a grouse hen from the tall grass. Mighty pretty feathers, but an disappointing hunt for Princess.

I've learned to adjust the differential feed for smooth, even seams on knits of different weights and textures--that thermal underwear fabric was pretty much a disaster on my standard sewing machine. I decided this pink ribbed neckline was fine without any top stitching at all.

There were, however, several serging disappointments. I had little success sewing lingerie elastic, and reverted to the standard machine to apply the leg and waistband elastic and decorative stretch lace on these underbritches. I'll some other elastic application methods soon.

Happy Thanksgiving With Raptor

2010-11-25T14:56:00.002-05:00

Thanksgiving postcards are uncommon in my grandma's album, but I am fascinated by the inclusion of non-turkey fowl in this one.

The back is postmarked "St. Paul, Minn., Nov. 27, 6:30 PM, 1912," and addressed to "Miss F. Williamson, Adams County, Iowa." The message reads:"Dear Florence, Received your postal some little time ago and was glad to hear from you. We wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving. Mother and I have been busy stuffing the turkey--Love to all. From Edna."

Happy Thanksgiving! We're enjoying a wild turkey this year, so there'll be no stuffing and few leftovers.