Albus Dumbledore

So you "always thought of Dumbledore as gay", huh? Oh, Jo. I really wish you hadn't said that.

Understand that I have no issue with anybody's being gay, fictional or RW, male or female. In fact, Dumbledore being gay makes perfect sense, as I look back over the books. The problem is that the Harry Potter books have been such a lightning rod for fundamentalist Christianity from the very beginning due to the witchcraft and magic content -- being banned from libraries, denounced from pulpits, and argued over (with varying levels of coherency) in every medium short of cave-painting. It looked like Deathly Hallows had put paid to all those arguments, with the fairly unmistakable Christian parallels in Harry's intended sacrifice and that wonderful chapter with Dumbledore at Kings Cross. Now she's answered one question at a big event, and it's in every news outlet and on every HP website that "DUMBLEDORE'S GAY! DUMBLEDORE'S GAY!". That one aspect of his personality will overshadow everything else about him. Everything from his "high-heeled boots" to his embroidered robes will be analyzed for suggestiveness, and nothing will be left of the Headmaster, mage, teacher and warrior we knew up until now.

It won't matter that nobody saw this coming, it won't matter at all that there is not one syllable in any of the seven books that led anyone to think that Dumbledore was gay. People whose opinions I had respected are now saying on HP websites that it destroyed all those years of enjoyment of the books to have this one revelation made by JK Rowling and that it calls her own Christianity into question. Anti-Potter writers are leaping up and down, shrilly crowing "I told you so" at the top of their lungs, sounding more like Bellatrix Lestrange than anything else, absolutely rejoicing that a hitherto-saintly character has now been proven to be the anti-Christ, and his creator a scion of the Underworld. (As an aside, what does it say about someone who can get such happiness over what they consider the "fall" of another Christian?)

I expect that many of the HP websites I've enjoyed up till now will either remove themselves from the net entirely or devolve into bar brawls. I think I will just go on re-reading the books, and give up on the forums and analysis.

Bad move, Jo.

The pie didn't work, but the magic might have

Harry Potter notwithstanding, it appears magic can only do just so much. I was all prepared for pie baking on Sunday -- my never-fail Julia Child recipe for pate brisee (that needs an accent egout, dammit), a new and highly recommended alternative pastry recipe, a pile of Granny Smith and Golden Delicious apples, butter, shortening, the proper flour -- all of it. It was in the low 90's out, and humid with it, but I figured central air conditioning should handle it, right?

Wrong. Clearly one cannot argue with the weather, and the humidity was just too much for the pastry. The alternative pastry recipe was summarily tossed at the first taste, and even Julia's pastry floundered, even after a couple of hours in the fridge. Never one to bow to the cursed animosity of inanimate objects, I went ahead and made a Granny Smith lattice-top pie anyway. It turned out reasonably tasty, but insanely ugly. We've been eating it with our eyes closed.

However, it may have in fact influenced the weather. It was only (only!) 86 degrees today, and the rest of the week is actually going to be in the 70s, and not nearly so humid. I cannot tell you how happy that makes me! I'll be able to work on my chevron socks again without the wool sticking to my fingers and the needles! I can do some more blocks for the Babette! And I'm going to make another apple pie this weekend, too!

I forgot to say -- the beloved Wiggy sent me four skeins of denim-blue alpaca wool from The Alpaca Yarn Company. He's currently in residence in Detroit with about a dozen cameras, and spends his weekends scurrying around the Lower Peninsula going to festivals and taking pictures. So far there has been a maple syrup festival, a Native American powwow, a zombie walk (unannounced, at dinnertime, down the main street of a town full of glass-fronted restaurants), a Red Flannel Festival, and a couple of weeks ago, the 11th Annual Michigan International Alpaca Fest. (That's where my Ravelry icon came from, by the way.) Local alpacas, local yarn, and very shortly a new winter cap for Wiggy to keep his ears warm in the Michigan winter. It's sooooo soft I almost don't want to give it up, but I'm pretty sure I can get some more. Apparently alpacas love Michigan, and there are quite a number of alpaca farms.

Here are some of his photos. I thought alpacas were like llamas or camels -- nasty and bad tempered. I had no idea they were this cute! Wigwam Jones' Alpaca Fest photos

Through the looking glass (or anyway the monitor)

So I was wading through spam and things in my inbox, when lo and behold there was my invitation to Ravelry. Heavens to Murgatroyd, I'm IN! Laying aside (nearly) everything else I was planning to do, I have immersed myself in its intricacies, have been reading forii and groups, investigating patterns and yarns, and am torn between despair that I don't knit well and exaltation that THERE IS SO MUCH TO LEARN OUT THERE, and lots of people who seem to be willing to teach. Clearly I'm going to have to hit the lottery and quit my job, because this Ravelry thing might just become an obsession.

I'm anyafire over there, so if you see me, please say hey! I'll probably blush and say something ridiculous, but that's about par for me.

I've been dividing my time between the Babette afghan, the chevron socks, and the new Prairie Schooler sampler, Autumn Leaves. Work is really stressful -- I mean at a neck-and-shoulder-cramping, Motrin-requiring level of stress -- but it unerringly falls away if I can get some time working on one of those projects. I'm Irish and Polish by descent, and you'd think there would be beer or vodka involved in unwinding, but fortunately fibercrafts have a much better effect.

Tomorrow, however, there will be still another project in the works. It was in the upper eighties today, and humid -- and we even got some rain this evening, for which devout and humble thanks are given. Sunday through Wednesday are supposed to be around 90 and humid, and that's just WRONG. This is October! Leaves turn, winds are chilly, pumpkins sit around on porches and front steps, scarecrows sit around, birds fly south, right? Nope, not here.

So I am going to practice a little sympathetic magic, and make believe it's really fall. I'm going to bake two different kinds of apple pie, and try and convince the weather gnomes that October really is fall, even in North Carolina. I might even remember to take pictures of the pies, too.

Ravelry, or Why Am I Doing This?

Is it just my imagination, or have most of the knitbloggers I read suddenly gotten their invitations to Ravelry all at once? Franklin, Rabbitch, Carol, KnittyD -- and probably more. I'm signed up and waiting, but the longer it goes on, the more that I-am-not-worthy feeling grows. I knit socks, crochet granny squares, do counted-cross stitch, and amass stash. I do not design sweaters, whip up shawls from obscure notes in Barbara Walker's collections, turbo-crochet, spin gossamer from cat fur, or even read knitting charts. I knit from written patterns, rip out by the mile, and wish I had knitting or crocheting or stitching friends I could learn from.

I'm hoping that Ravelry will give me a chance to learn from folks who are willing to teach, and maybe meet up with them in person someday. I suspect Marilyn will unnerve me into silence, Laurie will make me laugh most immoderately, and if Amie were to introduce me to Oscar, I will fall in love.

As of today:
Found you!
You signed up on August 4, 2007
You are #23034 on the list.
5806 people are ahead of you in line.
12656 people are behind you in line.
48% of the list has been invited so far

If I can't have an in-person knitting community, I'll make the best of an online knitting community, and hope that my knitted bits hold up amongst all the expected knitted elegance already on Ravelry.

Looking ahead

I may have mentioned that we live in a small town in eastern North Carolina. It really is one of the prettiest places I've ever lived -- lots of old houses, bungalows and Colonials and painted-brick confections that look like the kind of cottage you find deep in a forest, with woodsprites standing by; majestic old trees; thousands of azaleas of every hue for the spring, and tens of thousands of crepe myrtles of just as many colors for the rest of the summer. And you can actually drive out of town and get to green fields and green farms and green woods and undeveloped land in just a few minutes. I grew up on Long Island, lived in New York City for many years, and then in New Mexico for seven years; Long Island and NYC lost their open spaces long ago, and while New Mexico has the space, it hasn't got the green.

Alas, eastern NC also has summers of the long and humid variety, like from late April through early October. I know there are hotter and humider places, places where sweaters are unknown and there are such things as "winter shorts", and that there are quite a few folks who think that's just paradise. I'm not one of them. I need to live someplace where leaves turn in early October, where snow falls regularly in the winter, where I actually feel like I've earned spring and summer when they finally turn up.

Eastern North Carolina is not that place. So we're moving.

Wiggy has been offered, and has accepted, a job with a large corporation outside Detroit. No, it's not the one you're thinking of. Not that one, either. Nor that one. He's up there now, living in a rented room (the "hooch") and working away at his new job. I'm here in North Carolina, getting the house ready to be sold, packing up boxes, throwing crap away, and generally making myself a familiar figure at the Goodwill and Salvation Army dropoff doors. I'd like to say it's because I have a generous nature, but it has more to do with tax deductions.

It looks like the move will happen in the spring. I understand from real estate brokers that the best time to market a house is in March, April and May. Nobody wants to pull their kids out of one school and into a new one during the school year, and our house is probably going to appeal to a family with kids (four bedrooms, huge closets, two full baths, big kitchen, fenced back yard). So we have a few months to paint, repair and generally get the house in order. This should confuse the dogs, irritate the cats, and stir up a fair amount of dust.

It can also present some interesting distractions. In cleaning out a closet today, I came across my cartons of comic books -- X-Men, Bone, Neil Gaiman's Sandman, and a few Astro City. Needless to say, I sat on a packed box in the closet and read them for two solid hours. I can promise you that these boxes will NOT be seeing the Goodwill or Salvation Army doors!

Rain and other gifts

It's been raining all day today, and I am just happy to my core. This summer's been hot as the hammered hinges (August set some kind of record, I think), and wiltingly humid. And no rain. All of North Carolina is drought-stricken, and for a girl who loves cool weather, rain and clouds, it's been a loooong season. Today's rain won't make a dent in the rain deficit, but it sure helps my personal outlook.

I'm working on the little 4-block sampler from Prairie Schooler's Thanksgiving Comes Again. Teresa at Shakespeare's Peddler converted it to Crescent Colours overdyes, and she did just a marvellous job. That's it at the top of this post. She's done conversions of several other Prairie Schooler pieces, and I have 'em lined up to start, just as soon as I get my hands on them.

I'm less happy with the current sock project. I'm doing my first toe-up socks, Elann's chevron-stitch pattern (can't find the link at the moment) in a 40-shades-of-green Koigu. I really really like the toe-up beginning and the chevron stitch instep and leg, but the heel is flat-out irritating and I've ripped it out twice. You'd think third time would be the charm, but it's got big ol' gaps where I picked up the wraps, and somehow I managed not to pick those wraps up evenly so I had three left on one end when I'd finished the other. The thought of ripping it one more time had me whimpering, so I put it quietly back into its bag until I can face it calmly.

May I whine a moment here? I miss a knitting shop that has actual TEACHERS and CLASSES, not a once-a-week groupknit where the shop owner is available to help you with your project. That works fine for some people, but I need a structured class. When we finally move to Michigan, I will find such a knitting shop if it takes me forever!

boom

I blew up my WordPress blog last night. (It got better.) I was attempting to activate the calendar and apparently deleted something essential, because all of a sudden it all went foom and there was nothing left but the index page. Fortunately, the beloved Wiggy spends his waking hours communing with software and code and was able to haul Early Sunday Morning back from the abyss.

I should know better. I’m not completely computer-illiterate, but CSS is way beyond my capacity and I should be playing with paint-by-numbers Blogger or Blogspot or something. So sometime in the near future Wiggy and I will be migrating everything over to Blogger and publishing it here on Growlery.com. My faith in Wiggy’s abilities is utterly unbounded, so you shouldn’t notice anything except a template change.

Further bulletins as events warrant.