The Independent Stitch

Winter walking, plus "I made 'em so you don't have to"--acrylic socks

Although yesterday and today are warmer, it's been pretty cold around here lately. On Tuesday, the high was 21 degrees Fahrenheit (-6 C). Compared to other places I've lived (like the Midwest and New England), this is balmy, but I've been here for enough years that I've lost some perspective. (I used to wait for the school bus in -30 degrees F / -34 degrees C, so I do have some experience with moderate cold.)

Then again, I had a fine pair of boots when I lived in places that got colder than it does here, or at least I did after I was living in Iowa. I wore them until they fell apart and still miss them. For one trip to New England before I moved there, my sister loaned me her fake-fur coat, which my mother had made (my mother did tailoring). It was three-quarter length, had a wonderful lining and interlining, and was exquisitely warm, even though it was made of synthetic fiber. Once I lived in the Northeast, I also had a down jacket and other useful items that it doesn't make sense to invest in here and my old ones have also worn out.

For walking the dogs this week, we have been depending on layered wool sweaters and as many jackety things as we can put on simultaneously. On our feet we've added the Yak Trax we got in December. We bought a pair for my mother, and figured we might use them ourselves. Good guess. They're terrific: they fit over other shoes and increase traction dramatically. They don't completely eliminate slippage, but they control almost all of it. They leave little textured diamond-mesh footprints in the snow.

On Tuesday morning, it was obvious that not many other people or critters had been walking before us. Just one line of fresh tracks marked the inch or so of new snow on the sidewalk of the block we live on, and we saw another set crossing a street about an eighth of a mile west of our house. Based on size, type, and neighborhood history, we'd bet it was a fox. Colorado has four types of foxes (red, gray, swift, kit), two of which might be here (red, gray), but this was most likely a red fox.

Fox tracks are nifty. They run in a straight line, with the back paws hitting the same spots as the front paws previously did. Apparently only foxes and cats make this kind of lined-up track. The claw marks weren't apparent on the tracks we saw, but the texture of the snow made for clear pad prints and fuzzy periphery.

I was wearing a serviceable pair of socks that I leave at the bottom of the drawer. I like the wool ones so much better. I made these socks of acrylic.

Not all that long ago, I wanted some easy, portable knitting, a role usually filled by work on a pair of socks. I didn't have the time or money to buy sock yarn—I'd probably been paying printing or freight bills, or getting an old car fixed, or buying groceries, or any of the reasons one might not have money for fresh sock yarn—and I looked around for what I had on hand that might do the job. I came up with scraps of worsted-weight acrylic yarn. Although acrylic doesn't have many of wool's beneficial qualities, it does trap enough air to provide more warmth than some other fibers.

So I made a couple of quick pairs of socks.

Here they are, after having been worn for at least a year but not more than two years:

Both pairs pill pretty significantly. The upper pair looks better than the lower one, but that's partly because the pilling of some of the colors doesn't produce the sort of "frosted" look that you see on the multicolored part of the upper pair's ribbing and all over the lower pair.

Here's a close-up of the ribbing of the lower pair. It's not actually out of focus (or if so, it's not much out of focus). That's a small lace-pattern ribbing, which was more fun to knit than plain ribbing. Under the circumstances it does nothing to make the socks themselves more interesting.

I don't regret having made these socks, which gave me carry-around knitting when I needed it and do fill the gaps between laundry days, and they are indeed instructive.

However, I'd think about ninety-seven times before making acrylic scraps into socks again. There may be better-quality acrylic yarns that would perform more satisfactorily (this was a decent brand), but faced with acrylics and a need to knit I'd choose another project where synthetics are specifically requested—like the baby caps I made for Caps to the Capital.

How much do I like wool? A whole lot!

Sometimes it's good to be reminded.

Ethnic Knitting Discovery: Knit-along!

Donna Druchunas, author of Ethnic Knitting Discovery, is hosting a knit-along to go with the book. She told me to go take a look at the photos and thoughts people are beginning to post there. The knit-along-ers are making headbands as swatches (useful! especially considering the weather where I am right now and the speed with which a headband can be completed) and then are designing their own Scandinavian-style sweaters.

Donna's providing guidance.

Take a peek here. Wonderful ideas and colors and progress! I think I heard that more than three hundred knitters have signed up. There should be a tremendous amount of good energy over there.

By the way, my daughter is knitting her first actual object (other than a swatch). It's a sweater based on  Ethnic Knitting Discovery's ideas from The Netherlands, although I think she's planning to steek it. It's true, she has an in-house, on-call knitting instructor, but the idea of starting with this was hers, not mine. She seems to have been inspired by being asked to model this sweater for the gallery of designs from the book.

All fun!

Koolhaas hat: knitting beats architecture in this case (plus random car thoughts)

I've been spending all waking hours researching replacement cars and doing essential Nomad Press and freelance work.

I'm driving a rental car that adds a charge every day (no longer paid by the insurance company of the person who totaled the car I now need to replace . . . apparently the company covers three days of rental after they OFFER you a settlement, not after you receive it; I don't know how they think a person can find and buy a car in three days, while working, no weekends included, but I don't think they think at all, actually).

The rental is a sedan, which is not at all suited to my needs, other than just getting around town. The thought of heaving boxes of books into or out of either the back seat or the trunk . . . well, that's not a pretty thought. I can't even put the hand truck or the dog crate inside to take them to see if they'll fit in the cars I'm considering, so I take a steel tape measure instead and hope measuring is good enough. I do have another car that I can move cartons of books in if I need to, but my daughter's driving it to and from her several jobs (bookstore, clothing store, teaching fencing for the city).

As sedans go, the one I'm driving is pretty decent. It's been okay in light snow and has been fine for necessary trips to Boulder and Denver, but it's definitely a temporary fix. I'll be glad to have the fundamental car problem solved.

So here's some holiday knitting that succeeds at its many tasks:

On the right are two of Jared Flood's Koolhaas hats. Jared found his design inspiration in the relatively new Seattle Central Library, the principal architect for which was Rem Koolhaas. Here's what the library itself looked like on December 28 when seen from a car window in the rain.

The pattern for the hat was in the Interweave Knits Holiday Gifts Issue, and now that the issue has sold out ($7.99) is available as a standalone pattern from the Interweave online store ($4.50).

It's a terrific pattern. Although the start-of-round marker shifts a couple of times, once I'd made it through the repeat a full time I had the sequence memorized and it was easy to figure out when to shift the marker (necessary repeat won't work without shifting? shift!). I used Cascade 220 leftovers from the Norsk Strikkedesign sweater for my two hats. (The Norsk Strikkedesign sweater is getting a workout in this cold weather. Its sleeve length is perfect: the sleeves aren't so long that they get in the way, but they are long enough to double as built-in fingerless mitts in frigid weather.)

Just after the new Seattle Central Library opened, I walked all the way from the top to the bottom through the spiraling stacks and research areas, checking it out. It was interesting. It's still a nifty looking building, but after several years of use is taking some hits in evaluations of its functionality. Lawrence Cheek's article in the Post-Intelligencer covers those bases pretty thoroughly: "There's something missing from the art in this building, and it's so basic and simple that it can be captured in one word: warmth." Cheek also comments about odd walls installed to keep people from bonking their heads and on uncomfortable seating and noisy areas.

The Koolhaas Hat is, by comparison, extremely well designed, functional, and warm. It's a great pattern, with the decrease sequence neatly worked at the top so it doesn't interrupt the flow.

I did make it in the longer ("men's") size to ensure that there'd be plenty of wool over my ears. I wear it folded up one level (just the ribbing), which puts two layers where they're most needed.

Highly recommended. A delight to knit and to wear.

The socks on the left: these have been my carry-around, no-brain project for a while, and I made progress on them but am beginning to think of them as The Eternal Socks, which is not a good sign. I'd better finish them pretty soon and start another pair. There comes a time when even a carry-around project needs to get OFF THE NEEDLES.

I've been delayed in getting it there by the Cotton Chenille cardigan I'm making for my acupuncturist. It's also no-brainer knitting. I'm heading for the finish line on its body (the sleeves are done). No photos lately.

And now I'd better get back to work. I haven't decided yet whether it's going to be too cold today to do more car research, although it's already 4.5 degrees warmer than the predicted high (currently 16.5 degrees F/ -8.6 C). I'm at the test-driving stage. If I can't do that, though, I'll be able to get more essential desk work done. Either way is fine.

My hats and sweater, on the other hand, are superb no matter what.

What fiber are you? I'm . . .

Okay, there's a silly and amusing new promotional "quizlet" online for Clara Parkes' new book, The Knitter's Book of Yarn. It will not surprise anyone who has known me for long that I end up classified as "wool," even if I calculate for the two equally viable options on one of the questions which are spread as far apart, in points, as they can be: 0 to 4. My overall score still ends up being either 6 or 10.

I note, however, that "wool" is next door to "oddball," and a slight slip in daily attitude could move me in that direction.

"Wool" encompasses an entire universe of possibilities, from the finest Merinos through the sturdy Downs and the luscious Longwools all the way to the odd output of some hair sheep  (yes, I'd include them, perhaps for the making of doormats or scrub brushes). The quiz isn't refined enough to pick up my affinity for kid mohair, and the non-protein fibers are out of its loop altogether, but it's a pleasant, brief way to postpone getting down to work this morning.

Clara's book is excellent, as you might imagine. It's packed with info, and the projects (by both Clara and an array of guest designers) are simple enough to showcase (and let you experience) a yarn's quality without being boring. The pages are well designed: interesting, but not *so* interesting that the design gets in the way of reading.

There are a small handful of minor things I've found that I'd change about the book, and I'm putting them in small type because they're really tiny in the scope of what Clara's accomplished between these covers: (1) I'd add a master list of projects, with title, yarn type, designer's name, and page number. The projects aren't listed in the contents; you can browse the brief index to find them, and the page numbers are listed on the designers' acknowledgments page, but a descriptive list would be yards handier. I might even make this project list myself and put it inside the front cover (but not on the decorative endpapers). It'd take maybe fifteen minutes. (2) I'd re-title the Butterfly Moebius as the Butterfly Twist. It's not a moebius, because there's a full twist in it . . . a mistake I made myself not all that many years ago, so I'm empathetic; once corrected, never forgotten. (3) I'd use the word singles in place of single-ply, because of my stubborn belief that one strand of yarn is not a ply until it's been plied (i.e., combined with another strand). I'm glad Clara's not perfect. She gets awfully close, and I take comfort from knowing she's human, too. If we had to be perfect, we'd never get anything done and the world would be a much more boring place.

The Knitter's Book of Yarn is a terrific resource and I hope Clara's proud of what she's accomplished. She's got a great attitude toward fiber and does a splendid job of sharing her research, discoveries, and thoughts with the rest of us, both in this book and in her stalwart Knitter's Review.

_____

Car update: The '93 Explorer, also known as the Mouse, was hauled away yesterday. Once it was up on the flatbed tow truck, the extent of the damage to the front end became extremely evident: axle and frame were no longer correctly aligned or even close. Kind of painful to see.

The tow truck operator was a good guy. I arrived home from a meeting just as he was finishing up. He helped me retrieve the plates, which had needed to stay on the car as long as it was parked on the street. He advised me to keep them, even though one was pretty bent up in the crash, so no one would steal them and use them to drive around in something that shouldn't be on the road. (When the person from the salvage yard scheduled the pick-up, she said I could leave the plates in place and they'd be recycled. This feels better, though.)

I gave the loyal Mouse a pat before it headed off to, I hope, provide parts to other long-lived vehicles.

This morning I picked up as many of the fragments of both cars as I could pry from the snow and ice—red, yellow, and white lens splinters; strips of trim; and what looked like part of a bumper from the car that hit ours. There will be more to clean up after we get a good thaw.

The other driver's insurance company came up with a settlement on Tuesday that was based on the "fair market value," not actual or replacement value, and wants its rental car back by the end of the day tomorrow. Between editorial tasks, I'm working on getting another car that runs reliably and meets our needs (in addition to taking a silly fiber quiz). AAA Auto Source is doing the legwork, but I'm doing a lot of research so I can tell the AAA guy what to look for.

By the way, we've figured out that the person who skidded into our car lives a couple blocks away from us. We pass the house at least once a day, sometimes twice, while walking our dogs. A few weeks ago, we put one of the dogs who lives there back in the yard. We found it running loose on the busiest street in the neighborhood. We moved a flowerbox in front of the loose board in the fence that the dog used to escape, so maybe it couldn't get out again so fast, and we wrote them a note to let them know that the dog had found a way out, so maybe they could fix the fence for real.

Small world.

Not long after, someone from that house left us a note of a different sort {wry grin}.

As of this morning, there's a car in that driveway that we haven't seen before. It has temporary plates on it.

How did they get their car replaced so fast?????

The creative spirit: A couple of dancers

Knitter and dancer Ann McCauley forwarded me a link today to a YouTube video. I usually have to delete anything that's forwarded and I rarely have even a minute to go look at something on YouTube, but Ann's taste is impeccable (and not just in knitting). If Ann had a blog she could tell you about this herself, but she doesn't so I will!

What a testament to the creative spirit. This is an exquisite four-plus minutes of award-winning dance by an unusual duo: she has one arm, and he has one leg. There are no compromises in their performance; there's a whole lot of creativity, skill, and exceptional choreography (by Zhao Limin).

The introduction that Ann sent me from the message that she received is below; the page with the video contains additional links to interviews and television presentations by the dancers, Ma Li and Zhai Xiaowei. (Warning: The interviews and television are in Chinese; there's another site in French that has the video but it wasn't as clear on my computer as the YouTube version.)

This has me thinking about Eric Maisel's book about creative people and depression—the fact that people who need to create must create or their mental health can suffer: The Van Gogh Blues is finally coming out in paperback.

What a splendid example these dancers give of saying "Yes," no matter what.

_____

From the original writer who sent the video to Ann:

"When I was in China last month, I saw a Chinese modern dance competition on TV. One couple won one of the top prizes. The lady has one arm and the guy has one leg. They performed gracefully and beautifully.

"The lady in her 30s was a dancer and was trained as one since she was a little girl. Later she got into some kind of accident and lost her entire left arm. She was depressed for a few years. It seemed that someone asked her to coach a Children's dancing group. From that point on, she realized she could not forget dancing. She still loved to dance. She wanted to dance again. So she started to do some of her old routines. But by her losing an arm, she also lost her balance. It took a while before she could even making simple turns and spins without falling. Eventually she got it.

"Then she heard some guy in his 20s had lost a leg in an accident. This guy also fell into the usual denial, depression and anger type of emotional roller coaster. She looked him up (seemingly he was from a different Province) and persuaded him to dance with her. He had never danced. And to dance with one leg? Are you joking with me? No way. But she didn't give up. He reluctantly agreed. 'I have nothing else to do anyway.' She started to teach him dancing 101. The two broke up a few times because the guy had no concept of using muscles to control his body, and a few other basic things about dancing. When she became frustrated and lost patience with him, he would walk out. Eventually they came back together and started training. They hired a choreographer to design routines for them. She would fly high (held by him) with both arms (a sleeve for an arm) flying in the air. He could bend horizontally supported by one leg and she leaning on him, etc. They danced beautifully and they legitimately beat others in the competition."

Holiday travel knitting that didn't get done

The quest: yarns for swatches that will be scanned or photographed

For holiday travel knitting, I had intended to work on color swatches to be scanned or photographed for a book Nomad Press will be publishing next year. But I had a yarn problem.

Usually I knit swatches in Brown Sheep Top of the Lamb worsted. It's a simple, basic yarn that's pleasant to work with and is consistent but not boring. My favorite shades for this kind of swatching are 100 (natural, which is not so white that detail burns out in the photos or scans) combined for colorwork swatches with a lovely gray-green that isn't currently produced (it's dark enough to give adequate contrast and light enough that you can still see the individual stitches within the color areas). I have some of that color in my stash.

Because it's a singles yarn, Top of the Lamb doesn't have the visual static of a plying construction to interfere with what the swatches need to show.

However, it works up at 5 stitches to the inch (2.5 cm). With the necessary margins around the pattern area (clear stitches for image-cropping and a border to prevent roll and edge-stitch distortion), I can work a swatch with a maximum repeat of 55 stitches by 39 rows, or 32 stitches by 64 rows. That has been plenty for the swatches for the past several books.

Sometimes, though, this isn't big enough. I've been facing the limits with some swatches I've been working on for Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' revision of her book on Cowichan knitting, and I've run into it recently on the swatches for another title that's in development.

Choices: switch from scanner to camera (has some advantages, but more disadvantages) or find a yarn that works as well as the Brown Sheep worsted at a smaller gauge. Brown Sheep Top of the Lamb comes in a sportweight, but it isn't stocked locally.

1. I tried Cascade 220 in 8412 (natural) and 9464B, which is very close to the ideal Brown Sheep green. Cascade 220 is also a worsted-weight yarn, but it can be knitted up a little more densely than Brown Sheep worsted. While it's a four-ply, the plying structure doesn't interfere much with the view of the stitches, although because it's a little softer than Top of the Lamb the definition's a little "squishier" (that's a technical term that I just made up).

I worked out a few of the challenges of this particular set of swatches on my Cascade 220 trial, and the results nearly fit on the scanner bed, but not quite. I could try to scan it in sections nice and squarely (there are ways to do this that are not perfect but can be managed) and then combine them in Photoshop, but I'd rather knit than mess with a computer so I continued my quest for the right swatching yarn. I've got several swatches to which the solution to this problem will apply, so it's worth the effort of getting the yarn right.

After visits to all the local knitters' haunts, I went to the chain stores, thinking they might have a sportweight wool in stock in decent colors. Nope. Even the acrylics weren't available in appropriate colors; the fact that I was considering acrylic is a sign of my desperation. I'm happy enough knitting swatches, because I learn something from every swatch I make, but I don't enjoy knitting most acrylics. It's kind of like having pasteurized process cheese instead of Tillamook extra-sharp or Kerrygold cheddar.

While I was in Seattle, I browsed the Weaving Works, looking for a nice, generic yarn. They had one option among the knitting yarns but it were pricier than I wanted to use for swatches . . . and it wasn't available on the spot in appropriate colors. Because of timing, I couldn't get to Acorn Street Shop (where I had other items I wanted to get, but that'll be next trip) or Fiber Gallery. Given my druthers, I'd get in at least a small amount of trouble at all three shops on each visit to the area.

However, as I was about to leave I cruised back toward the weaving area, thinking that some of the weaving yarns might work.

2. I found something with potential: Klippans Tuna, a Swedish yarn, 6/2 (weaving-speak), at 350 yards/100 grams or 1600 yards/pound. (For comparison, 220 is 220 yards/100 grams . . . the reason for its name . . . and Brown Sheep Top of the Lamb worsted is 190 yards/113 grams. 100 grams is about 3.5 ounces and 113 grams is about 4 ounces.)

It's a two-ply yarn, with more twist in both the singles and the plying than many yarns primarily intended for knitting rather than weaving. I didn't like the lack of clarity in the swatch I started. Comparing the 220 swatchlet above with the Tuna swatchlet, the Tuna stitches aren't as straight and well defined in relation to each other. Often a weaving yarn will soften when it's washed, and I might have liked the results better if I'd washed the yarn before swatching, but there were some other things I didn't feel completely comfortable with: the white was whiter than I wanted and the green, while adequate, was just a bit light.

I think the Tuna might make some terrific mittens, when I have time to play with the ideas in Terri Shea's lovely (and independently published) Selbuvotter, but that won't happen until I slam-dunk these swatches (and a couple of other work-related pieces of knitting).

3. So I gave up and ordered some Top of the Lamb sportweight from an online source. I chose the best of the available colors for the dark, number 310 (peacock), which is darker than ideal but should work. It arrived swiftly and I ripped open the envelope and thought, "Gee, those skeins of peacock look awfully similar to the worsted weight . . . and the natural looks about right for a sportweight. . . ." Yup, the peacocks were, indeed, worsted weight.

A phone call straightened that out and I should have my sportweight contrasting yarn soon. At 350 yards/113 grams (4 ounces), it's just slightly heavier than the Klippans Tuna, so it should work.

But meanwhile I haven't completed the swatches and I've needed to be knitting something else for travel. That's the topic for what should be the next post.

Car progress?

As the snow begins to melt, in exchange for patches of clear, slick ice where the runoff has refrozen, bits of clear, yellow, and red plastic are showing up in interesting places in front of the house. Also sections of car that are not related to brake, signal, or headlights have begun to appear. It'll be good to sweep up: an activity that will be enabled by claim progress and thawing.

As of this afternoon, our claim has been transferred to a new department at the driver-who-hit-our-car's insurance company: the Total Loss Department. I'm not sure I'd want to say I worked at the Total Loss Department, although I think the people who do work there probably clear up a lot of messes, and therefore are quite the opposite of a total loss themselves. Apparently the other car is also now being handled by this department.

Rock Day, and thinking of Priscilla Gibson-Roberts

January 6 is Twelfth Night, the end of the Christmas season for those who follow that particular traditional calendar. In rural England, women went back to their regular work, which included spinning, of course, on January 7, sometimes known as Rock Day (an old word for distaff is rok).

So welcome to Rock Day, when we begin our work again. I've taken the time between New Year's and Rock Day "off" this year to sort papers and organize the office and generally clear the decks for another year of work. (Also to deal with the broken car and other impediments.) It's tempting to launch right back into the piles of tasks that await, and that's my usual practice. But at this start of 2008 I've canceled my normal compulsions and let myself start more slowly.

It seems like a good time to revisit my message and request from December 19, asking folks to send cheerful notes for Priscilla Gibson-Roberts after the start of the year, which it now is. A few people couldn't wait and I've already sent her a slim packet as a teaser. She's doing better, and the plans for changing her living situation within the next year are proceeding even more smoothly than expected. Yet those shifts won't take place until summer and there's winter and cold and slush between now and then.

The e-mail address through which I'm coordinating these messages is nomad at nomad-press dot com. If you'd like to send a handwritten message or card, drop a note to that e-mail and I can give you a physical address. I'll repeat that she doesn't need "stuff"—just good thoughts, whether by e-mail, post, or simply holding her kindly in your mind.

I wonder if the improvement in her situation since mid-December may be in part because more of us are thinking about her? Whatever works is good! And a bit of randomness can open new doors. Thus the quirky links in this post. . . .

Merry crashmas

Bump

This is not what you want your car to look like when you arrive home from visiting relatives for the holidays, especially when you left it innocently and intactly parked in front of your house:

We got home from the airport at 1:30 in the morning. The white car, known as the Mouse (a name it came to us with), had been relocated several feet east (backward) from where we left it several days earlier . . . and it was not in the same condition. We deliberately did not look at the car when we first got home, because (1) it was dark, (2) we were tired, and (3) we knew, thanks to friends, that although the house was fine the Mouse was "not so fine."

Here's another view of "not so fine," in full daylight:

Despite "not so fine," here's a series of good-news items related to the Mouse's changed circumstances:

• No person or critter was hurt in the crash, although I'll bet a couple were pretty shook up (driver and passenger in the impacting car).
• The driver left a note and phone numbers.
• One of our neighbors saw the whole event and recorded details, just in case (thanks, M).
• Our house-caring friends noticed the damage when they checked the premises after dark on Christmas eve (apparently about five hours after the accident . . . the basics were noticeable even with minimal illumination), found the note from the driver (thanks, K), and told us about the situation by e-mail so we could prepare ourselves and start playing phone tag with the driver (thanks, J).

Here are some observations we made about the scene:

• The front license plate was found in the snow about four feet in front of the vehicle.
• There are shards of red plastic scattered in the snow over an area extending several feet in front of the car. Red. Brake lights. Not from our car, of course, so from the other car, so its rear end apparently hit our car's driver's-side lights, bumper, and grill. REAR impact? Interesting.
• The bumper is still attached at the corner that appears to have sustained the most damage, and is detached at the other side.
• The grill is broken in its center and on the driver's side.
• Major impact to the frame underneath the bumper seems to have been pretty close to right in the center, although the Mouse as a whole was apparently shifted backward by several feet while its front was also shoved toward the passenger side (away from the street) by maybe 4 to 6 inches (10 to 15 cm). Considering the extent of the jump backwards, it stayed pretty straight. Must have been hit quite squarely.
• No fluid leakage (from radiator or elsewhere). Sturdy car.

We still don't know whether the Mouse can be adequately repaired (largely a question of frame and suspension, not yet evaluated), but here's the overview and the really fortunate stuff. We're working to focus on the fortunate stuff.

A driver was apparently headed east on our street in a sedan, hit a patch of ice, and put a foot on the brake. (Drivers in the Midwest, New England, and other places where the snow stays on the ground for weeks or months at a time know—at the reflex level—that you don't touch either brake or accelerator when you hit ice; many people around here, where the snow most often quickly melts away, haven't developed ice-appropriate split-second reactions.)

When the driver applied the brake, the sedan started skidding and rotating. By the time it reached our car, it was still moving east but its front end was facing west. The skidding car connected with the Mouse back-end-first (red plastic) and the sedan's trunk was shoved in just about to its rear window at the moment that the Mouse was catapulted several feet backward, its license plate was ripped off and dropped in (or flung into) the snow, and its front bumper was removed from all but one of the bumper-mooring points (we hear that there was also damage to the front end of the sedan, although we don't know how that occurred).

When we think of a car skidding on ice down our normally very quiet street, we think of what it might have hit that would have stopped it. (Living beings are excluded from this list, because they would have been mowed down but wouldn't have brought the skidding vehicle to a halt.)

It could have hit:

• a tree,
• a streetlight,
• a house,
• a car.

Of all those items, the only one that would yield upon impact, and thus reduce the potential for injury to the people in the skidding car, was another car, preferably parked and unoccupied.

And that's what happened.

We now have a rental car, courtesy of the other folks' insurance company, and their adjuster was here today to do an initial evaluation of the damage to our car.

Yet because of what else might have happened in this situation, we're looking at our ailing auto as a hero of sorts. It probably saved the driver and passenger from some physical harm.

That perspective helps ease the pain of seeing our car in such a state. We're really glad we were out of town and didn't have to watch or listen to the actual crash.

I'll talk about knitting in an upcoming post before long. I did get some knitting done during our trip.

Today was consumed by calls and visits from insurance people, the delivery of two pallets of books during the adjuster's visit (a reprinting of Knitting in the Old Way, by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts), and my daughter's getting stuck (and unstuck) in deep snow with my car while she was on her way to work at just about the same time. (The white car in the photos here is the one she mostly uses.)

A good quote for the new year

And here's a quote I happened across today, that seems just slightly ironic following the story about our car, but might set the tone for a rewarding and productive 2008:

"I long to accomplish great and noble tasks, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker." —Helen Keller

A thought for the new year

When I was sixteen and learning to drive, my dad took me to an empty shopping mall parking lot on a winter Sunday (in the Dark Ages, malls were closed on Sundays). He had me accelerate and then jam on the brakes, then recover from the skid. It was a really good teaching technique. It was scary. Terrifying. But also fun, once I got the hang of it.

Skidding and recovery weren't on the driver's license test, but when you went to the Elston Avenue site in Chicago (which we did the first time) parallel parking was, so I flunked the test although I managed to get the '62 Chrysler (it was all white; no red top) parked between the orange cones anyway. I got it 12 inches (30 cm) from the curb and it needed to be less than 6 inches (15 cm) away.

Then Dad taught me how to really parallel park.

(The Chrysler was never easy to parallel park. One of my few car-damaging incidents involved peeling off a chrome strip on the passenger side while getting it out of a parallel spot on a narrow street next to the high school, on a rare occasion when I drove there for winter-vacation backstage work on a theatrical presentation. I hardly ever drove to school because I didn't have a car. Nor did much of anybody else in those days. Mostly I walked the three miles to and from school, or took the bus if I had to, although I could walk in just about the same amount of time as it took to wait for the bus . . . and in the winter, walking was a whole lot warmer than standing around. We had to wear skirts to school in those days. Even at -25 degrees F [-31 degrees C]. Yes, public school. No, that isn't a good idea. One of the reasons I went to the college I chose was because the women were allowed to wear jeans to class in the winter.)

The second time I took my test, we went to a different site—Libertyville. None of the testing sites was near where we lived. They were all at least a half-hour away. This time Dad sent me and my mother to the testing facility in a car that had a misbehaving ignition. I think (this may be legend, may be truth) it had been built as the prototype, intended for display at the car shows, and somehow Dad managed to acquire it, even though it had some mechanical quirks, not having been a finished design off the assembly line. (Dad's first recognizable word when he was a toddler was "car," and he was always magnetically attracted to interesting, preferably high-powered, cars.) Before we left for the testing facility, he showed us how to hot-wire it. We got the car running but the examiner wouldn't let me take the test and flunked me instead. Even though it was Mom who did the actual hot-wiring right there in front of his eyes. It wasn't me. Although Dad had showed me, too. As a safety precaution. Engine-access variety. So I could be sure not to get stranded in that car.

I got my license on the third try . . . I don't remember which testing site we went to; I was too scared I would flunk again . . . parallel parking was not required, and I don't remember which car I drove. In Illinois in those days, they'd only give you three tries before you had to wait a long time before testing again, maybe until you were fifty.

Conclusion du jour

When skidding, make no sudden movements. Your primary tool is the steering, but don't do anything sudden or rash with any of the controls. Ease off the accelerator just a bit. Although ABS systems (which were invented very recently by some standards) may be handled differently, in general do not let your foot get near the brake. Steer the car in the direction that you want it to go (this is sometimes called "steering into the skid," but it's easier to remember as "in the direction you want to go").

Ideally, practice this a lot in a safe area before you need to do it in a real driving situation.