A beautiful book

The author is David Sheff and the title is Beautiful Boy, just like the John Lennon song.



I think this is the saddest real life story I have ever read. I know there are worse tragedies than addiction, but never before had I read about the horrible life of an addict and his family in such detail. It is a very depressing book, but it is lovingly written.

No time to knit...

... or to blog. But there's always time to read.


Yes, comics count as reading.

Another inch, another book

The book is Into the Wild, by John Krakauer. This is Jennifer's recommendation. Actually, she recommended the movie, but I thought the book would be more interesting, so I got it from my local library.



And interesting it was. I had not heard of Christopher McCandless, who after earning his college degree cut off all links with his family and basically became a hobo. Two years later, he died of starvation in Alaska. Knowing the outcome from the beginning of the book was no spoiler. Rather, I was amazed on how much my opinion on McCandles evolved as I kept reading. The author was very thorough in following his steps and narrating them in detail. This book would be excellent  were it not for the inclusion of other similar cases or the digression about the author's related experience. This book was supposed to be about  only one person and I wish it had remained so.

Allergies, socks and twinkies

I finally went to my primary care physician and insisted on getting allergy tests. Which did not do me any good, since none of the stuff I brought from work produced a reaction. The doctor explained that the test is only for a short term reaction. I need what is called a patch test, so they can test for prolongued exposure.

Meanwhile, it was fun (though quite itchy) to see little rows of welts develop on my forearm and learn that I am allergic to grass, pollen, dogs and cats.  Since I've never had problems with any of those, I cannot take those tests seriously. Having a welt when you actually puncture the skin is very different from breathing in an allergen or rubbing it against unbroken skin. I certainly don't plan on getting rid of my dear pooch. The doctor recommended that I always wash my hands after touching him but guess what, I've been doing that with all pets all my life. That's probably the reason why I've never had any problems. He also says that the pooch must not sleep in our bedroom. Good luck with that one. We've tried that and all we get is hours and hours of howling. He does not like being away from the pack.

The Summer of Socks has begun and I never took the time to add a button to my sidebar. Heh, I have not updated my sidebar in years. I am a lazy blogger. Maybe this site should be the lazy knitter instead of the cheap knitter. I am counting my current pair of socks for the Summer of Socks. I don't know if it is against the rules, but I do know that this Summer is turning out to be much busier than I expected.


I am reading a foolish book: Twinkie Deconstructed. The author, Steve Ettlinger, picked the twinkie as a typical example of a processed food item, and then went through its label exploring the origin of every single ingredient. Some of those additives are incredibly complicated. They may be synthesized form petroleum, rocks and/or industrial by-products, and then end up present in the twinkie in really minute amounts. But they need to be there in order to acheive good taste and prolongue shelf life. I am not new to food chemistry, and yet I never realized how processed foods relied so much on some unsuspected sources such as mining or palm oil production in the third world. It is also weird to find out that some of those ingredients are also needed in a lot of non-food items such as vaginal lubricants or candles. I cannot remember when I last had a twinkie but I can confortably say it was really the last one for good.

Ankles!

OK, now that both heels are completed, I can keep going round and round unitl I run out of yarn. There will be some increases down the way, but those can easily be handled by the coriolis stripe spiraling around the leg: I'll just skip the corresponding decreases. It will still take me a long time, but having both socks on the needles will help.



The book in that picture is Ladies Coupé, by Anita Nair. It seems that I am drawn to women issues when it comes to reading about far away lands. I was very surprised to see how many things I felt women in my own country have in common with women in India. I could relate to many of the issues that each character brings up. Yet, I felt very distant from these characters. It could be because the setting was just too foreign for me, but I think another problem is the way the book is written. It is neither a novel, nor a set of short stories. It feels like a lot of loose ends who the author tried to tie together, not entirely succesfully. Nevertheless, it was a very enjoyable introduction to a culture I am only slightly familiar with.

The slowest socks

The Summer schedule is killing me. Classes have not even started and I am already exhausted by the time I get home. I cannot imagine how it will be later on.

Here's the heel of the second sock:



I can't wait for the weekend...

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.