Court, First Amendment and Toe-up Socks

Hello dear readers - back again. Well, this morning I had court - a brief hearing during which the Judge (it was an exceptions hearing) ruled against me despite my best arguments. I hate when that happens - luckily the client was all right and will probably be all right. After that I came home to the "office away from office" I call home. Answered e-mails and phone calls and now I'm posting.

The picture above is of the Towson University Arts Center where one of our Senators, Ben Cardin, is going to be holding a Town Meeting on the issue of health care reform. Since I am a firm believer in health care reform and am hoping some real changes happen this time, a friend from choir and I will be heading over there for a rally to support the public option or at a minimum, some sort of reform. I do have some concerns, since there have been a number of rather "in your face" protesters at some of these events - and Sen. Cardin is a democrat in my little blue State - but hopefully there won't be any violence. I am certain that the group of us who are going will be sure not to escalate anything and will simply use the shunning techniques the Society of Friends have used. In other words, turning away. It's going to be rather crowded and a very hot day - even for August in Merlin, so we will only be attending the rally. Here's hoping this one will be a true dialogue and not a staged "confrontation" paid for by insurance company dollars! Whatever your opinions on this issue, none of us has the right to shout down or threaten those holding viewpoints that differ from ours. Whether only honored in the breach or truly a part of our tradition, such behavior is simply un-American. In fact, it's shameless, not matter what your nationality.

A now, (in the words of the late great Monty Python) for something completely different:

I've been working on that Tweed Baby Blanket by Jared Flood and finally decided I couldn't stand it any longer, so I decided to finish about six rows earlier than the pattern and am doing an i-cord bindoff - a LOT of fun! I'll have pics of that tomorrow hopefully when I have a finished blanket for you to see. (Hope springeth eternal!)

Book Review

I figure I have over 250 knitting books, which means I could do a review a day into the next year - and if I keep getting more of them, well, it'll keep me busy for a while. Anyway, one book I have purchased fairly recently is Wendy Johnson's Socks from the Toe Up.

Wendy is from the MD-DC-VA metro area. She has a terrific blog that I read practically every day and a cute cat named Lucy. This is I believe Wendy's second book and a third is on its way to the public soon, if not already. The first is, ironically enough, Wendy Knits and the third is Toe-Up Socks for Every Body, a title that already intrigues this woman with perpetually swollen ankles.

Anyway, Socks from the Toe Up is a terrific resource because it really teaches the reader about how toe-up socks can be constructed through various techniques. The first third or so of the book is taken up with this basic knowledge and the next two thirds build on the groundwork of the first with patterns from plain "vanilla" socks up to cables and lace and gansey style socks. The photography and illustrations are excellent and the book is almost errata free. In fact, I was able to simply jot the few errata (which she freely shares on her website) on the pages themselves, there were so few of them.

Well, it's time to get ready for revisiting my hippie youth! Until next time, dear readers, God be with you 'til we meet again!
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