I won!

I won Mathgirl's contest! She randomly chose my entry on unusual or obscure holidays. Where I come from, Candlemas is not that unusual, but people in the US or Canada don't really celebrate it. Here's my prize:



It is a skein of  Mama Llama Monterey from Woolgirl. Thank you, Mathgirl, you made my day! I've never knit anything with seacell in it, and I can't wait to try it out.

The semester was officially over last week. That means that things are going to slow down until the Summer session begins. I will try to finish my sunset socks before then. Here is one heel, completed.



I recently finished reading  The clash of Fundamentalisms, by Tariq Ali.





This is another depressing book which gives the historical reasons of the mess we have in the Middle East. Here'a a quote: "To fight tyranny and oppression by using tyrannical and oppressive means, to combat a single-minded and ruthless fanaticism by becoming equally fanatical and ruthless, will not further the cause of justice or bring about a meaningful democracy. It can only prolong the cycle of violence."

Which reminds me of a song  Nacha Guevara used to sing in the 80s.



I will not bother translating the whole song. It's horrible. In the beginning, with much optimism, she decides to stamp out all hatred. But in doing so, hateful methods are adopted. A very sad message.

I succumbed

Oh yes, The online Coriolis pattern was enough to tempt me and now I am the owner of Cat Bordhi's New Pathways for Sock Knitters. My library does not have it, it was not available through interlibrary loan, and I really wanted to explore more this idea of not having any gussets but having a heel flap.



So far, no buyer's remorse. I had already begun these coriolis with the idea to  keep increasing after completing the heel in order to make the arch a little bit more roomy. Now that I have the book in my hands I see that Cat's method actually teaches you to take row gauge into consideration, unlike the online pattern which was kind of vague (it says to start the increases at 5-3/4" less than desired length, and I'm not sure that worked for Caroline's socks). I like the way the book is teaching me to think of socks in a new way, but is still lax enough to let me try stuff my way. I might even venture into cuff down socks again thanks to the alternative toes her book offers. Oh, and I am happy to report that the mistake I found in the online pattern is not present in the book.

Another book flew by this week: Agent to the Stars. This is Scalzi's very first novel, which nobody wanted to publish, as is usually the case with unknown authors. So he uploaded it to his website and it became a major hit among Science Fiction fans. He got more that $4,000 from this shareware novel before someone finally decided to publish it.



I got a copy through interlibrary loan, but if you like funny Science Fiction and a quick read, you can follow the link to the whole novel, which is still online.

Sunset socks

WIth the pretty Opal yarn I got fron Nutse, I started a new pair of socks. The pale blue contrasting with the warm colors reminds me of a sunset at the beach. This will be another Coriolis pair for myself, with some modifications. My progress would be faster paced were it not for a book that I found hard to put down: The Logic of Life, by Tim Harford. I finished reading it last night.




In general, I am not interested in economics, but in this case the author tries to explain things such as sexual behavior, racial discrimination, CEO pay, o inequalities between cities and rural areas. According to him, people making really foolish decisions tend to have what turns out to be a rational base, even when the consequences are to everyone else's disadvantage. He cites a lot of behavioral experiments conducted by other researchers, and in some cases the results made me very sad. How can we humans be so selfish and biased?

Afghan Squares

These are the two afghan squares I contributed to this year's Rainbow of Heroes. In previous years, I had been given at least three colors of yarn, but this year I got three balls of yarn, all in one color. Also, I did not have much time, so I ended up sending simple mitered squares.

   

I recently finished The Android's Dream,  by John Scalzi. Crazy book. But then, Science Fiction tends to be crazy. There's two other books by him that I consider to be much better written than this one, which is an earlier book. You can tell he is getting better. Now, don't get me wrong, this book is still very funny and it kept my interest all the way through. I was actually sad when it was finally over.