I am no longer just knitter extraordinaire.

I am now Baking Goddess.

Julia Child, step aside.

For Joe’s Grandpop’s birthday, we were assigned the task of recreating in sugary confection form, Dale Earnhart Jr’s car. 

No problem, I am Picasso with frosting.

First, we began with the pan – for $50, you too can create a perfect Dale car, complete with edible decals. Joe’s folks, however, go this pan at a garage sale, no decals. We were on our own.

The recipe on the side of the pan suggested that one box of cake mix (ssshhh!!! don’t tell Julia!) should suffice. One cake box later, we had one cake in the trash can. Here, is the result of two cake mixes, 6 eggs, and one entire cup of oil.

Yum.

Next – the magic!!!

 
I set up my palette! Ah, the colors! I am Cezanne! I am Degas! I am an artiste!!

Yes, you do need to adjust your monitor - truly, that’s not pink, it’s really red (cough, cough).

Mint green? Nonsense! That’s forest green. Really, no Jedi mind tricks (psych!)

And, voila! A masterpiece worthy of Le Bec Fin!

Hmmmm, Lemon thinks I should stick to knitting.

And, I guess I’d have to agree.

Not since Gone With The Wind, when Melanie spies her husband, Ashley Wilkes, a tiny, limping figure emerging on a path, returning world-weary from the war, and makes a tearful, mad dash, arms open wide, running across the open fields of Tara to welcome him home, has there been such an emotional, heart-wrenching reunion until the reunion of Christian the Lion, and his surrogate parents, Australians John Rendall and Anthony Bourke, who purchased Christian at Harrod’s as a cub in 1969. Nearly a year later, Christian, having outgrown his rectory playground, was flown to Kenya, and reintegrated into the wild. The following year, his human family went to visit him in his new home in Africa. In December of last year, a video of their reunion surfaced on Youtube, flooded the internet, and left millions crying to the tune of Whitney Huston’s warbling of I Will Always Love You.

Of course, like all things hip and cool, I missed it. And, when I brought it up at knitting circle on Wednesday nights, enough other people had missed it that posting this lovely bit of schmaltz – a veritable animated Hallmark card – on the last Friday in March, my least favorite month, seemed appropriate.

So Happy Almost End of March! Enjoy!

I’ve been walking around slightly irritated for two days now.

Is it the 19% proposed increase in my property taxes?  No.

That I bought 10 random Powerball tickets yesterday, and three of them had 29 as the Powerball?   Slight annoyance, but eh, whatever.

Constipation?  No, all is fine down there, thanks.

No, I’ve been stewing.

WTF is Steve Wozniak still doing on Dancing with the Stars?????

If there’s one thing I hate more than clowns and midgets, its Steve Wozniak on Dancing with the Stars.

Not only is this guy the worst dancer EVER, if he keeps going, I really think his ring around the rosies style of dancing (all fall down!) is going to do serious damage to his partner.  I don’t care he’s a nice guy, I don’t care he’s a nerd and it would be nice for a nerd to do well with the cool kids – he can’t dance, and he should be banished.  And, after his accusations that Dancing with the Stars is rigged, he’s a bad sport.

I’m not saying I’m disappointed that that lunatic, plastic faced Denise Richards got the boot (did anyone notice Maks constantly whispering in her ear?  I think he was saying thinks like, “you are crazy in the head, woman, you know that?” and “it’s not complicated – you’re a cooky looky,” and “you’re gone tonight, looney tooney and I can’t wait to run so far, so fast away from you”)  Nor would I have been sad to see that lazy playboy bunny hit the road (did you see that look on her face when she didn’t get kicked off – sheer disappointment that she couldn’t go back to sleeping until  4 p.m) but come on – this guy is worse than Chloris Leachman, and let me tell ya, I hated Chloris.

You’d think from my serious case of irritation, I’d be a ballroom purist – but I don’t know a bogo pogo from a twinkle step.  If I attempted a quick step, it would be a quick fall.  And, am I offended like Carrieann when someone oopsy’s and takes their foot off the ground?  Nah, big deal, put a sock in it already Carrieann.  But, I am the girl who has an autographed picture of Gene Kelly in my library, and grew up with a serious fascination with the American Movie Musical.  A vote for Steve Wozniak is like saying f- you to Fred Astaire – and who would ever say f- you to Fred?   Would anyone have paid their nickel to see Steve trod on Ginger’s toes?  Of course not! 

On Monday and Tuesday night, I just want to sit in front of my t.v., knit, and see something graceful and beautiful (or hot and steamy like the naked guy from Sex and the City) – even Steve-O is at least trying, and you’d never know that the Queen Bee turned the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia into Jailhouse Rock with all of her new found posh.  I do not want to watch the Pillsbury Doughboy in lederhosen (’cause you know some crazy Bavarian Bratwurst dance is coming – I can just see the producers thinking how great it would look for his belly to be hanging out between suspenders.  And, instead of the worm, he could do some crazy thing called the sausage!) . 

So, if you want to save me much grief and consternation, please vote for someone other than Steve on Monday.  I really don’t want to have to boycott my favorite show.

My road to legal fame and fortune began when I was fifteen years old (although some may say it began in the womb, as I  emerged stubborn and argumentative).  My mom worked at a now defunct personal injury law firm as a legal secretary.  In my mom’s day, being a legal secretary meant, “I could be the lawyer, but I don’t have the piece of paper.”  She opened the files, generated the complaints, wrote the settlement letters, filed the pleadings, everything — and all in some cockamamy thing called shorthand. 

From the minute I walked in the door as a summer file girl, she kept pushing me – ask to work the switchboard, they need a fill in — learn that.  Ask to type dictation – you can type, never mind you don’t know how to use the dictaphone, you’ll figure it out later.  Tell them you can comp the medical bills, I don’t care if you’re scared – just do it!  There was always another skill to pick up, another thing to make myself useful – and valuable.  And, if I ever was going to become a lawyer, because to her, I certainly wasn’t going to be the secretary, I would be ready, ready from the ground up.

And, if I was going to be a lawyer – there was no way I was going to be a shyster PI lawyer – oh, no – she said, you’ll work some place – some place like Wolf Block.

Wolf Block was it – if you were a Jewish lawyer, working at Wolf Block meant you had arrived, you had made it, you were really the real deal.  You could now call yourself a “Philadelphia lawyer.”  All of the lawyers who worked at our small personal injury firm said, “Wendy, you don’t want to be a lawyer.  Don’t become a lawyer.  But if you have to be a lawyer, be a lawyer at Wolf Block.”   These PI lawyers were overworked, they made no money, they sued over slip and falls, car accidents, botched minor medical procedures.  They walked with their heads tilted to the side, as if too heavy to hold up.  And, to these weary, miserable guys who hated their jobs, and hated being a lawyer, Wolf Block was like a mirage, a geyser in the desert. 

And, as I grew up, their hopes grew – she got into Penn State main campus – next stop Wolf Block.  Temple Law? Moot court? Law Review?  Wolf Block here she comes.

And, when I became a public defender?  Eh, they said, she’ll do that for a couple of years – and then Wolf Block.

Well, the road that took me to the public defenders office took me through a few large law firms, as a secretary, and from the behind the scenes, after hours view I had (I worked my way through law school as secretary on the night staff of a big firm), it wasn’t for me.  But, it’s still with sadness that I wish a fond farewell to Wolf Block Schorr and Solis Cohen, which voted yesterday to close their doors.

Wolf Block was founded in 1903 as Stern & Wolf.  In 1935, it’s founding partner, Horace Stern, became the first Jew elected to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and eventually became its Chief Justice.  Up until the mid 60′s, it was the only elite Philadelphia firm where  a Jewish lawyer could get a job.  In 1962, half of the largest firms in Philadelphia had no Jewish attorneys, and the rest had a token one or two.  It really wasn’t until after 1964, when the Union League finally voted to accept Jewish members that doors finally started to open for Jews in the larger law firms. 

To me, it’s hard to imagine a time when doors were closed to Jewish lawyers, but they were.   The legal community, you would think, would be the last place you would find anti-Semitism, but it was a truth nonetheless.  And while Wolf Block wasn’t always a harbor for liberal thinking — participating in the McCarthy witch hunt for Communists in the 1950′s and defending Jefferson University’s firing of several, alleged Communist doctors — it was still always a front runner for at least religious diversity. 

Wolf Block’s disintegration is no surprise – it’s been coming for a few years, as one failed merger attempt after another was reported in the Legal Intelligencer.  But, there’s still a difference between recognizing an economic reality, and accepting that an icon for Jewish success is no longer going to be part of the fabric of Philadelphia’s legal community.  And, while being a lawyer a Wolf Block is hardly a measure of “success” to me, I still know how proud my mother would have been (of course, she’s proud of me here), and the other guys at the PI firm, would have been, had a hung up my shingle behind the hallowed doors at Wolf Block, and what they stood for.

So, goodbye to Wolf Block, and good luck to the 300 or so attorneys who now find themselves jobless, as well as the equal number of staff members who now have to find a job in this dreadful economy.  Paths take you to strange places sometimes, and who would have ever thought Wolf Block’s path would come to a deadend..

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been having grandiose visions of where this blog can go – this puppy is not on a leash!

Unfortunately, I’ve let my “visions” run away with me (no, not to the extent that I need some pyschotropic medication – when I start hearing voices, THEN I’ll worry), and I plunged ahead, and began filming for my video knitting school.

This was a mistake.

It looks so easy when Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney both squeal, “I know! We can put on a show!  Yeah, we can use my dad’s barn!  We can get costumes left over from the school pageant!”  They didn’t have a director, a writer, a production assistant. They struck up the band, there were words and music, and thousands cheered. So easy.

Wrong.

This video knitting school is going to take some planning.  What I filmed yesterday is all over the place. I might need an outline. I might need a script.  A syllabus perhaps?  I might have to stop adlibbing so much. I might want to know where it’s going.

So, it’s back to the drawing board. But, now I see what I have to do.  Storyboard, outline, script, I got it.  I think.

But, while I’m in the planning process, here’s a peek at what’s coming (sort of) -

I really hate March.  That whole thing – “March comes in like a lion” – garbage.  If March were king of the forest, it would show its leadership and nobility by being consistent, trustworthy, and reliable, and the weather would reflect the lion.  To umbrella, or not to umbrella?  Rain today, sun yesterday, what tomorrow?  I’d be ok if it were just a precipitation issue, but it’s a temperature thing as well – up, down, up, down.  How is girl supposed to pick her clothes in the morning – I can’t even get the coat right.

March isn’t a lion — March is a ground hog.  It’s a schizophrenic month, constantly asking, “did I see my shadow?  I think I saw my shadow?  Do I want to see my shadow.”  March needs a therapist.

In the meantime, to deal with March, I tend to buy myself treats – but since March is a long month (and it seems longer every year), I generally didn’t splurge on large goodies.  In the past, a pretty lipstick would do.  But, it’s kind of like buying my father a present – I’m going to be forty – so I’ve bought him 2 presents a year for at least 30 years – that’s 60 presents – 60!  What else can I get him – another CD, another book? I’ve been buying myself lipstick in March for a good 20 years – 20 lipsticks – and that’s just the lipsticks I buy in March.  Not another lipstick!  The thrill is gone.   What’s a girl to do?

Buy a handbag!

And so I did – and to give you a little March thrill – I will share it with you!

I was walking to knitting circle last night, and passed one of my favorite stores, Hello World – a beacon of light in this world known as March.  Hello World is on 20th Street, just passed Spruce, and on Pine Street, 11th maybe?  The window is always enticing, the store is filled with hard to pass up items – fantastic handbags, jewelry by local artists, the cutest stationary ever.  Stuff, just fun, frivolous stuff.  And, I happened to have been walking around with a $25 gift certificate in my bag that I’ve been saving for two years for just the right occasion.

And, here it is – the right occasion – are you ready for the bag?

How fantastic is that?  I’m not really a yellow person (although you would never know from my recent fascination with all things Lemon), but this bag spoke to me – it says, “April” – it says, who is March, I am the true lion!

So, this bag now joins my tote bag that I got at the Gap last month, in preparation for the long haul through March – and no, I don’t have any yellow walls in my house, I’ve been playing with Photoshop.

And, speaking of my efforts with Photoshop, I don’t know if you can tell or not (hopefully you can), but I’ve been making an effort to post better photos on this blog – I’m not saying the photos on Knit and the  City were all crap, but I’ve always admired blogs like Brooklyn Tweed, and Lolly Knitting Around for their fabu photography.  I took a 6 hour class recently, on the in’s and out’s of Photoshop, and while the first three hours were pretty good, the second night became a frenzy to show us skill per minute, and it’s just not that kind of program.

So, while my Photoshop skills are mediocre, but improving, my actual photography skills aren’t what they used to be.  I started taking pictures with a completely manual Ricoh when I was in high school.  Once I “got” it, I moved on to an SLR Canon, a Rebel.  I loved my Rebel, I loved my aperture priority, and frankly, I loved film.  After college, I took several semesters of a noncredit Temple photography class just to have unlimited access to the darkroom.  But, at some point, that SLR just wasn’t practical.  It didn’t fit in my handbag, it was cumbersome, and in the end, it was film, hardly the medium for my bloggedy world.  But, this digital stuff, I don’t know – I just don’t see things the same way – maybe it’s because I’m not looking through a lens, but at the back of my camera.  When I looked through my Rebel, I saw depth of field, I saw how I wanted the picture to look, and I knew what settings I needed to get the right exposure.  I thought this would all translate but for whatever reason, it hasn’t.  But, I’m working on it – because Photoshop can work a lot of miracles, but a crappy picture generally will always be a crappy picture.

And, Photoshop isn’t the only think I’ve been playing with – this blog is going places baby (well, at least around the virtual corner)!  I’ve become obsessed with tweaking the layout, thinking of new features (video knitting school anyone?) . . . but again, it’s like the photography – I don’t feel like I have the skills in my tool box anymore.  On Blogger, I had become pretty adept with HTML, but here – CSS?  PHP?  If you click on the Gallery tab up top (another work in progress), you can see, I can’t even figure out how to move the margin over.  So, like March – I’ve been a bit schizo – do I use WordPress as a CMS, and buy a completely customizable theme like Thesis, that is a bit of an investment, but will relieve me of my frustrations with newfangled code.  Or, do I struggle on, use WordPress as just my blogging platform, and create HTML static pages with Dreamweaver and the rest of the Adobe arsenal for the rest of my ideas.  And, if I’m going to move to a more dynamic theme, how much more work do I put into this one?

And then I think, stop thinking about what it looks like so much, just worry about the writing – but then I think, I worry about the writing a bit too much, and I’ve become a bit to stuffy.

Well, I’m working on it.  I’m still trying to find my voice here — strange that a new look, a new cover, a new concept would change my writing style so much – it’s still the same old me, right?

Or, maybe I’m not the same old me – I’m me in March.

For anyone who has read the “About” section of this site, you will know that AFTER I cleverly named the blog Lemontines, I googled “lemontine” for “shits” and giggles, and found a rather, nasty definition of “Lemontine” in the Urban Dictionary (Ok, I won’t make you click on the link – it means “crap stains in one’s pants.”)  Whatever, like many Urban-adages out there, I chose to ignore it.

But, I’m a woman of action – not an ignorer!   A changer!   A reformer! and I have now, courtesy of The Big Word Project, a viral marketing campaign to redefine the dictionary, redefined Lemontine, and restored it to its proper place in the modern lexicon.  For $1 per letter, you can purchase a word, and link it back to your blog, so that your blog now becomes the “definition” of the word.   A “lemontine” is once again a whimsical product of an overactive imagination (or an imagination with too much time on its hands), generally in the form of  a blog post. 

The Big Word Project is  the brainchild of  Paddy Donnelly and Lee Munroe,  ”two Masters students from Northern Ireland, who are exploring what different words mean to different people.”  Big Word’s homepage is a cloud of words, and each word sends you off into a new worldwide web vocabulary.  So, I took “the dictionary” for a test drive.  Being the legal scholar that I am, I clicked on “Constitution.”  Does it send me to the official site of the United States Supreme Court?  Or perhaps the ACLU?  Or horrors, does it go to Ann Coulter’s personal blog?  Maybe – if it’s in Polish – or what I think is Polish – Konstytucja.info .   Quite right, don’t you think – why should the United States Constitution be the global definition of “constitution?”  Then, I tried “abba.”  Was this abba the “rock” band?  Abba, as in abba dabba do and Fred Flintstone.  No, it’s Abba as in The Springfield Reader, and “independent voice of Springfield, IL.”  Hmmmm  . . .

Ok, so maybe The Big Word Project is not so much a project at all, but a big springboard for advertising.  And maybe my $9  didn’t go to changing, reforming and fixing online misconceptions about the meaning of Lemontine, it probably funded Paddy and Lee’s St. Patrick’s Day celebration.  But, maybe that’s all that “defining” is – advertising.  I can advertise away the “skid marks,” “track stains,” and make it into something fresh and lovely – like my little puppy.

Perfect opportunity for a gratuitous puppy shot!

I’m sure that $9 is going to go a long way in preserving our puppy’s very ladylike reputation. No shit stains on her, no sir.

Hmmm, maybe I should redefine “crap stain” and direct it to the Urban Dictionary? That would be another well-spent $9.

Have you noticed the Widget thingy on my sidebar – I am “on page 0 of 576 pages” of The Book Thief.  I’m not actually on page 0, but I have no idea what page I am on.

The beauty of the Kindle.

Beauty?  Not knowing what page you’re on?  Absolutely.  Reading is no longer a race to the finish, because who knows where the finish is.  Nor is it about flipping to the finish, to see if its worth it.  The decision on what to read is no longer a cost/benefit analysis based on amount of time available v. the desire to read said book.  There’s just no way of telling how long a book actually is — your progress is noted in percentages, not pages. 

I’m reading things I never would have dreamed of reading, had I been able to flip through and evaluate the time commitment.  Take the New Yorker.   When I had a subscription to the paper version, the one that came in the mail every Monday, and fell into the pile next to the toilet by Tuesday, I would flip through for the cartoons.  Then, on the second pass, I tended to read the shorter blurbs – the about town, the small reviews, the short story perhaps – but not the long, long, long featured essays that went on for pages, and pages and pages – did I really want to make a two hour investment in reading a 20 page article about Barthleme and what it really means to be post modern?

Apparently, when I don’t know how long the commitment is going to be, I’ll bite.  On Monday, when I started the article, I had no idea it wouldn’t be until Wednesday by the time I finally finished it. 

So time commitment is no longer an issue – it just is what it is, you can’t worry about what you can’t see.  The other thing that goes hand and hand with length is also obsolete – weight.   Never again do I have to ponder the following question – based on my schedule now, can I lug that hardback book around, or should I go for the slimmer paperback?  And, the question doesn’t boil down to cost – that paperback is in the same ballpark price as the hardback, as even a NY Times bestseller is generally only $9.99 (except for the rogue author here and there trying to buck the new system).

And, I am a sucker for the NY Times book review – like yarn, books become, I have to read it now (the New York Times said so!) – and not last summer (because I spent the summer on the beach, and hence, made the tactical decision just to go with paperbacks - see the question of “weight” above), but the summer before, I got suckered into hardback after hardback that I ended up hating – The Yiddish Policemen’s Other Ball, Divisidero, The Falling Man . . . two summers ago, and I still remember how much money I wasted!  With the Kindle, the new books can be more expensive than the paperbacks (sometimes even as high as $16.00 – but a $16.00 mistake is still less painful than a $24.00 mistake).  And, speaking of “I have to read it now!” you really can read it now. With Amazon’s wireless delivery, you can have your latest heart’s desire in a matter of seconds.

Length and weight no longer an issue, neither is a pretty cover.  You can be told from the time you start to walk and talk that you can’t judge  a book by it’s cover(although, when you start to walk and talk, you’re only looking at picture books, counting books, books that go “mooo”, and  you probably can judge a book by it’s cover – maybe that’s why the advice never stuck)  but a pretty cover, a good blurb, and handsome jacket, can go along way.  You go into Borders or Barnes and Noble and there are tables and tables of books – what catches your eye?  Author of course.  A snappy title, maybe.  But when you have the book in your hands, a snazzy cover and a well written blurb might just push you over the edge into purchasing.

Not any more.   No more covers.  Everything is so egalitarian!  And, with no covers, you have so much more privacy.  Ever been embarassed because you’re reading something completely brainless – a guilty pleasure trashy romance?  or perhaps a book you read as a child that now seems silly as an adult?  No worries – no cover means that no one can see what you’re reading!  Reading is again a private thing – enjoy what you want, no one is judging you for your cover (alghough, that does work in reverse as well – I am totally a cover judger). 

Now, there are some books that are not on Kindle, that I do want to read – and that’s the only true dilemna now — since I just love my Kindle so much.  For instance, I really want to read 2666 – but frankly, I only want to read it on Kindle.  The last paper book I read, The Given Day, at 800 pages, was completely overly cumbersome - I could never prop myself into a comfortable position, the book was just such a beast.  2666 is 912 pages!  I don’t want to invest in 912 pieces of paper.   So, am I missing out – it just won the National Book Award? 

Yeah, probably, but there’s so much other Kindle content out there, and you can’t read ‘em all.  The web is loaded with free e-book content, all of which are readable on the Kindle. My queue is backed up with free classics – books that I was supposed to read in college, but chucked and read the cliff notes, or read so fast just to get to my next assignment.  And, unlike in college, when I had to carry around a backbreaking bookbag of books, the Kindle holds them all in either it’s memory or (since I have Kindle 1), an SD card that holds thousands – right now, I’m carrying around at least 200 books. 

It sounds like I’ve abandoned paper, doesn’t it?  When I got the Kindle for Hanukkah (hmmm, I guess that’s one factor I haven’t had to worry about – the price of the Kindle, since it was a gift – so put it on your Holiday list for December), I said, eh, I’ll always read paper books – but now, really, I have no desire.  The e-ink technology is so good, that sometimes I get tricked, I  go to turn the page instead of push the button, because that’s how much it feels like reading a book. 

And, reading is fun again – and I’ve overcome any shame in saying that its because the book is on a gadget.  I like being able to push a button and look up a word I don’t understand.  I like having a clipboard, where I send things I want to think about later, or with Joey’s reading Olympics, things that are going to make it onto index card question cards for study purposes.  I have to admit, I’m not a reading purist – I embrace the technology, and I look forward to what comes next.

And not only is reading fun again, but the more I read, the more desire I have to write – not to go too far with my point, but I’m not sure this new blog would have happened had I not been reading as enthusiastically as I have been since I got my Kindle.  I wrote about it here somewhere – either in the first post, or the the about page – about this strange phenomenon I’ve been experiencing – that of losing words, like they’ve all run away and abandoned me. 

Kindle has given me back a handful, and the desire to use them.

When Joe and I first started dating, he laid down the law – I can’t continue to date you if you remain this messy. I took a good hard look at my home – clothes scattered on the floor, dishes in the sink, dust an inch thick on the woodwork, I could go on and on . . . and I decided that cleaning up my act would be a good thing, and growing up – picking up my clothes, making my bed – was past due.

So the cleanup process began – we methodically went through the house, from top to bottom, and put a system in place for keeping things clean. If you take something out, put it away – it was like a lightbulb went on – huh, really? that works, excellent! And honestly, I’m so much happier coming home to a clean, fresh smelling house. Its so different, we might as well have bought a new house.

And that organizational bootcamp somehow worked it’s way into my knitting.

I no longer have start-itis or cast on fever – I am cured.  Hallelujuah, I have been saved.

I only knit one project at a time.

Now that doesn’t mean that at this moment, I only have one project on needles – no, I still have remnants of my old knitting life (as well as the occasional dish left in the sink), but they’re old projects, projects that might never get themselves finished. 

So, when Kate Davis, author of my favorite sweater this year, the Owls Sweater, posted a teasing picture of her next pattern, Paper Dolls, without the pattern yet being available, I was thrown into a tizzy.  I had just finished Ishbel, and I couldn’t start a big project, because if I started a big project, I would have to finish it before I started Paper Dolls, and I had to start Paper Dolls the second the pattern was available – it was that kind of design, that called to me, that said knit me.

That threatened all that has become good in my knitting life – it was like crack – the waiting, the waiting – must cast on . . .

But, I took it down a notch.  No need for a big project, a little project will do. 

So, I russled through my stash, and found three balls of Kid Classic in Merlot, and cast on a small shawl,at a nice worsted gauge, and that would tide me over until Paper Dolls became available for purchase.  This shawl is from the Textured Shawl Recipe from Ravelry.  And like all good recipes, it’s a little bit of this (stockinette) a little bit of that (textured stitch) and a little something else thrown in (garter).

So, just like when I make a pie or a coffee cake, I tinkered with the recipe, just a little, because I wanted to use up my ingrediants.  I added an extra four rows of textured stitch, and then another block of garter just to use up my yarn.

And, the only problem with a little shawl – it’s a little too little to tie, but I love the way the collar kind of curls (from the stockinette), and while I’m not usually a big fan of the shawl pin, this little Owl (me and the Owls again!) did the trick.

And Paper Dolls? Well, there was a few days between the finishing of Textured Shawl, and the casting, but I didn’t go into shock, I didn’t keel over and die, my fingers didn’t curl into a coma, I took out a languishing project (Bird’s Nest Shawl), and undid the four or five rows that had to come out because of a mistake I made about, oh, 3 years ago, when it got thrown into the misfit toy pile for another day.

So, here is the beginning of Paper Dolls. I’m using O’Wool for the body, Fibre Company’s Fingering Canopy of the lighter contrasting color, and a plum Koigu for the Dancing Dolls.

I’m knitting on 2′s, and between the i-cord cast on and the corrigated rib, it’s going pretty slowly.

But slow is ok, no hurries, no worries – and nothing waiting in the wings.

So, remember I referred to Joey’s science project debacle a few posts ago?

Apparently, it wasn’t such a debacle.

He got an A.

I’m still scratching my head.

Let’s go back, see what you think.  Joey was given his 5th grade science project assignment before Thanksgiving.  Sometime before Christmas, he had his project approved, and his main bullet points approved.  Joe and I knew nothing about this until the day before it was due.  Oh, Joey’s bringing his science project to your house – everything is ready to go, you just need to print it out and paste it on the cardboard.

So, he brings over his tri-fold cardboard display board.  No color construction paper, no pictures to hang on the board, just 3 graphs, showing the difference in battery voltage from the start of the project, Friday in the a.m. (3 days before the projects due), until the end of the project, Saturday in the late p.m (2 days before deadline).  Joey’s project you see, had something to do with determining whether you have the best batteries on the market – or, as his approved title questioned, “Do You Got the Best Batteries.”

Yes, that was the approved title – Do you GOT – I couldn’t believe it.  And, I know that the teacher actually read the form, because she had made corrections to his other bullet point/headlines.  Anyway, he totally suckered everyone – because his testing method was putting the batteries in his X-box controller, each for five hours, to test the level of change in the batteries.  All of the batteries started at 1.6 volts, and dropped to a volage of 1.4, except for one battery that started at 1.5 and dropped to 1.4. 

And the graphs — the only thing we had to hang on the board - showed the batteries all starting at 1.5 and dropping to 1.4.  When I asked for an explanation of this graphing phenomenon, he explained that he ran out of room numbering, so his mother just said start at 1.5.

Needless to say, there was a lot of starting over to be done.

So, I poured myself a glass of wine, skipped watching the Eagles v. Giants playoff games, and explained to the child that I understood the waiting until the last minute thing, that I did it all the time as a child, and the problem ended up being that what you did at the last minute was probably crap, and when my parents went to back to school night, there was my crap next to someone’s project that hadn’t been saved to last minute, or had actually been done by their parents.  And, if handing in crap is ok with him, then by all means, wait until the last minute.  But, if he wanted to do something better, maybe he should start earlier.

We then talked about the problems with his scientific method – specifically that he had not managed to wear any of the batteries down, and that he had actually learned absolutely nothing from the video game playing experiment. 

Then, there was the mad frenzy of gettting everything up on the board.  Needless to say, nothing on the disc he brought over was usable.  It had been typed in Typepad, so everything was locked into a small font.  I printed out pictures of the batteries from the website, the specifications, etc.  And, five hours later, there was something – it still looked like crap to me, but he had something to hand in.  And, even if it looked passable, the underlying project was still crap.

And, I’m still trying to figure out how he got an A on this thing.  The research paper that he handed in contained no research – I know it’s fifth grade, but you can still find at least one study out there on the internet that has already done a battery comparison.  Or, his hypothesis had something to do with thinking that the Energizer battery would be the best because it had the best commercial — he could have at least talked about the commercials, and why the commercial was so persuasive.  His project “notebook” was two pages of illegible scribble on a steno pad, that I had tried to pretty up by giving it a cover.  I guess he got an A because the same person who approved “Do You Got the Best Batteries” is the same person who gave him the grade.  But, I’m totally pissed off.  Why would this kid ever put any additional effort into a project if some shmo in authority just told him that this piece of shit was worth an A?  Everything I said to him about starting earlier, pride in his work, etc. – out the window.  And the thing is, I’m right – and now I have been stripped of my credibility.

You may be thinking, this was only a 5th grade science project, maybe it was worth an A, and I say no – I’m sure there were at least a handful of kids that took the project seriously, started on time, and put together fantastic projects.  And his gets graded the same as theirs?  Oh, I guess they got an A plus.

I can only hope he got an A, because in his Conclusion that he put up on the board, I pretty much made him write a conclusion detailing all of the things he could have done differently, and why the experiment and the project was pretty much crap.

But, I think in this day and age, where everyone gets a trophy, and we pride ourselves on rewarding mediocrity, that’s just too much to hope for.