scifiknitter

I am struck dumb these days. Most of what busies my days either cannot be talked about in a blog, or has already been talked about by me in previous posts. I am not about to start whining, so it's easiest to remain silent. Suffice to say, the work is going as well as could be expected under the circumstances. I can't write about my knitting either, since I am mostly knitting gifts for people who read my blog. Posts will have to wait until after the items have been finished and given away. I do have something to offer, however: my recipe for holiday bread. I am making a batch tonight to take tomorrow to Cape Cod, where we will celebrate one of the best holidays of the year with my father and stepmother. I do love Thanksgiving, because all we need to give is a hearty appetite and appreciation for the wonder that is our lives, right now and right here. This recipe has evolved from the one my mother used to make a wreath kuchen every year for Christmas breakfast. Once I learned how...

My professional life is rife with challenge right now. There be snakes hiding under rocks, and much need for discretion. A few years ago I joined the board of a non-profit, and promptly was asked to be treasurer, as no one else knew anything about money. I contributed a lot over the years, and often felt that what I have learned was actually helpful to the organization. All for naught in the end. The agency lost the funding that was its financial foundation, and the board voted unanimously to dissolve. I am truly ambivalent about this decision. We finally found a talented Executive Director and with just a little more time, she may have dragged the organization (kicking and screaming) into organizational stability and a more secure future. We all ran out of time. And now I'm the one who is digging into what bills must be paid first, and thinking about how to responsibly dispose of all that paper. At work the budget is still uncertain, as we still do not know how much we will be cut...

R. won the race for Town Supervisor - 328 votes out of 639 votes cast. The current Town Supervisor staged a write-in campaign in the last week before the election. Our county just switched to a scanned paper ballot, so write-ins are very easy. He got 202 votes, and was the second place finisher. The conclusion must be that the insurgent campaign guaranteed R. the victory. The insurgency in the NY-23 campaign had the same result, where Democratic candidate Bill Owens won. This result is gratifying to me; I couldn't do a lot to help R. in our town, so I worked as a volunteer in the Owens campaign. The overall conclusion: if you are going to play with the fire of mounting an insurgent campaign, you had best be prepared to be burned.

A week ago, I was lost in the altfiber paradise affectionately nicknamed Rhinebeck (the official name is the NYS Sheep and Wool Festival ). It is a huge event, so big that I have to break down the experience into subtopics. I still have a bit of glow left from the experience. Getting There The treasurer of non-profit I work for went last year, and wanted me to go with her this year. I told her I was in. Then I learned a few months ago on the Ravelry forums that a local woman was organizing a group trip, complete with chartered bus and a block of reserved motel rooms. I told my colleague, and she agreed that this was the way to go. So I contacted the organizer, reserved 2 spots on the bus, and reserved a room for two nights. Close to the last minute, my colleague was no longer able to go. She asked me to find someone to take her place, saying that she did not expect reimbursement for the bus. She suggested that I take my daughter. A. would have gone in a flash, but she had two midterms...

I have been a sorry excuse for a blogger lately. Real life has been requiring my attention. My husband's campaign is going well. He has a game-plan, and he's sticking to it. My daughter is working on grad school plans. She procrastinated long enough to make it difficult to take the GRE, so she is applying only to Canadian schools. I suspect that this was her gameplan all along. The budget at work is under attack. We are in a holding pattern until our finders decide just how deeply they want to cut us. I've been able to spend time with family during the past few weeks. Father, stepmother, mother, daughter, son, son's GF, grandkids, in time order. I have two big projects breathing down my back at work - a migration of the email system to a new platform, and expansion of the tax prep program. But right now I am taking some time for myself. I'm on a chartered bus heading towards Rhinebeck for the NY Sheep & Wool Festival. And i'm writing a blog post on my iPhone...

Two projects are featured here. One has been done for a while, but I didn't have a good picture of it on its recipient. The other project is one I finished yesterday, just in time to give it away. The Studly Lace Scarf This project is a combination of a pattern I liked and a hank of yarn I happened to have in my stash. The pattern was a dropped-stitch basketweave scarf in the spring/summer 2009 issue of Vogue Knitting, and was designed by Laura Bryant. The magazine shows it as a wide scarf, almost a shawl, in a delicate pink. The pattern has a cool feature: you deliberately drop certain stitches and let them run down from the top to the bottom of the scarf. A dreaded mistake is transformed into a design element. The yarn I had was dark, shot through with yellow, reds and greens - a very different feeling. I also had only one skein. I decided to make the scarf narrower than designed, to make sure it would be as long as possible. I also knew that as much as I liked it as I was knitti...

Did you feel the earth shift at 9 PM on Tuesday night? Because the techtonic plate of the politics in the town I live in shifted when the polls closed. Tuesday was primary night in New York, and there was only one race on the primary slate here: Republican candidate for Town Council. Three candidates were running, and the two getting the most votes would get to be on the ballot in November and would go on to almost certain victory. The candidates: - The woman who is a farmer and a county worker who has served on the Town Council for almost 8 years. She has been a sensible member of the board. - The newcomer, a woman who belongs to one of the two fire departments and who first ran a few years ago as a write-in. This time she did her legwork, and filed a Republican petition, got the Democratic nomination at the caucus, and filed an independent petition to boot. - The grande dame (EDIT: from the French, meaning "great lady") of our town's politics. This candidate is 88 year...