The Independent Stitch

Blog Action Day: Water

This year I haven't signed up to participate in Blog Action Day, because it was one more thing to do and I haven't had time. Yet the topic is one I care about a great deal, having been fortunate enough to grow up in a time when we could go camping or canoeing and drink directly from streams and lakes. Now I live in a semi-arid landscape, which gives me another perspective on water. When I was in the U.K. recently, I was surprised to be in a place where low-flow plumbing fixtures don't seem to be necessary.

Late this afternoon I took a break from work, which I've been doing in a temporary location for the past couple of days, and walked around taking a few snapshots of water.

I saw this just outside the back door:

Because I don't live here, I don't know the purpose of this water bowl, although the hose that feeds it was delicately balanced, as was the rate of flow. . . .

Down the gravel drive, I saw this. . . .

Aren't the horses and ponies beautiful? There's water in that photo, too. I'll bet the line of trees behind the horses runs along either a stream or an irrigation ditch.

Across the road, this is what the landscape looks like:

Any plants that like water need to grow where there is a supply.

I walked along the road a little way and then climbed up the hill where there was a stock tank full of water:

The supply line has been set up as carefully as the green hose in the first photo.

Inside the tank . . . goldfish. Thanks to a visit with Carol Ekarius one time, I wasn't surprised and I knew why they were there. They keep the water fresh. They can live successfully in water tanks and grow to be quite large. The horses don't bother them and they don't bother the horses.

And that's water observation around here for today. It's good to have fine water to appreciate. I never take it for granted, even at home where it's available, clean and flowing, in a way that makes it seem abundant and easy.

I have my mother to thank for that, in large part. She taught us to value water long ago, in the days when we could still drink it straight from streams and lakes.

 

Flamingos, goats, planning for photo shoots, and musk oxen in need

Life continues to be focused (completing The Project), to the point that it feels surreal. So yesterday morning when we discovered, while walking the dog, that a neighbor's lawn had been flamingoed, the vision seemed nearly normal:

We couldn't tell what the occasion was, although the "lead flamingo," nearest the door, had a card tied to its neck and when we took our afternoon dog walk an extraordinary number of cars were parked along both sides of the street near the same house. I've known about the flamingo phenomenon, but never seen it in action. Apparently a normal delivery involves forty flamingos. In this modest neighborhood, a mini-flock of eleven made an adequate impression.

On The Project front, I believe I will be finished with the goats later this morning. Then we'll bike to my cousin's for a gathering that will include two cousins, their two husbands, my 87-year-old aunt (88 in June!), my daughter, and me.

In addition to working with goats this week, I've been engaging in a series of e-mails with The Project's editor in which we are planning photo styling. The design launch meeting occurred at the publisher about ten days ago, so the art folks are also involved. I've known since we began The Project that the photo shoot, or shoots, will be extensive. When we're in the studio, we will need to be extremely well organized and efficient. I've put a lot of systems in place to facilitate that. Now we're getting close to deciding what to shoot, where, and how. The decisions involve both aesthetic and practical matters.

The editor asked me to send several sets of the locks and spun samples for the art director to use to shoot preliminary photos. These images won't be in the final book, but they will help her conceptualize the layout and help us all plan the week to week-and-a-half of actual shooting. (There is, of course, a book involved as part of The Project, but the manuscript part of this effort feels like just the tip of an iceberg.) So I sent off the Down breeds, seven "sets" of samples in two FedEx boxes (one large and one medium). I was relieved to hear that they'd arrived.

The Down breeds are, however, relatively simple to present. As our discussion by e-mail has evolved, I've also sent snapshots that display concepts required for other fibers, ideas pertaining to tactile qualities that we'll need to convey through the printed page. The big questions involve how.

I'd previously sent the overall concepts that the book wants to be about visually: diversity (of types of fibers) and transformation (from raw material to yarn). (The book will focus on the fibers themselves and on the yarns that can be made from them, not on spinning techniques or finished objects, although those will be hinted at.) A number of ideas that apply to multiple different fibers will be represented by demonstrations involving one fiber. It's like putting together a huge jigsaw puzzle.

Here are some of the "talking point" photos I've snapped and sent off as part of the long-distance discussion.

A typical sample set, very basic:

That's Rouge de l'Ouest: raw locks, clean locks, and two sample skeinlets.

Next, a set showing texture possibilities with one fiber type . . . not all the possibilities, which are infinite, but enough to hint at what can be done. The various people involved in making this book happen need to mumble among ourselves about how best to show whatever can be conveyed in photos. These are all adult mohair. If we show skeinlets, then I would skip the two finest skeins (second and third from the right), because there's not much useful information conveyed by those two at this scale.

However, if we show strands of yarn, rather than skeins, then those samples do offer useful information:

(I've since added more plying twist to the finest white sample; most of the yarns I'm making are more loosely spun than usual in both singles and plying, because they need to showcase the fiber qualities in a photo, not perform well after years of wear in a textile. The project I am spinning for is the printed page, not a sweater or blanket or rug. And I'm spinning very, very fast, with no pauses and few opportunities to improve on my first attempt. Although I've marked some skeinlets to go back to and try for again, if I get the mass of work done in time.)

What the skeinlets offer, over the strands, is an opportunity to hint at the yarns' (and fibers') handling qualities, including drape:

Left to right: cashmere (a distinctive bulkiness, despite its fineness, and a supple quality), pygora type B (drape and luster . . . that's some of the combed-out pygora hair peeking in at the top . . . usually discarded, but interesting in a whole different way), adult mohair (body and luster), and plain standard goat hair (essentially no drape at all).

Here's a color set:

Those are cashmeres. They come from different parts of the world and have different fiber descriptions in qualities other than color—for example, length, diameter, and luster—which we may or may not be able to convey photographically, given our time and space constraints. This is an overview, not a focused study on each fiber.

For fibers that are grown in several (or many) colors, we're trying to at least hint at the variety. One of my dreams has been to include a complete rainbow of the defined Shetland colors, although I'm still missing samples of three of them . . . light gray, mioget, and dark brown have been elusive. While the Shetland breed itself is not currently endangered, the colored sheep make up quite a small percentage of the world population and we could lose them.

Speaking of losing resources, one of my motivations for The Project is an awareness of how vulnerable the living animals are to extinction. They are the providers of these amazing materials that we work with. Some breeds that existed when previous books on fibers were prepared (not all that long ago) appear to have vanished: we can't find them. Anywhere.

Yesterday I learned that the nonprofit research Musk Ox Farm in Alaska needs help (and therefore so do the musk oxen). There are two primary sources of musk ox fiber for textile folk: living animals in Alaska, and hunted animals in Canada. The living population in Alaska is also a primary resource for research on the animals' biology, research that is likely to be critical to these animals' survival in an environment that is being affected by climate change. These critters have been around since the Pleistocene—so for at least 12,000 years—and were hunted to extinction in Alaska in the late nineteenth century. The donation page contains buttons for set amounts, but there is also a "U-pick" option for any amount, and any amount helps.

What if there were no qiviut? Or Lincoln Longwool? Or. . . .

If the animals that produce these fibers die out, people who don't know fibers won't realize what they've lost. If the only food you know has been served from a drive-through window in a styrofoam container, then you can't understand not having access to freshly grown vegetables or artisan cheeses. Fortunately for those of us who do know fibers, one of the best things we can do to ensure their continued presence on the planet, and in our lives, is use and enjoy them . . . and share them with others so they can understand.

While I was amused by the pink plastic flamingos, I am awestruck daily by what I continue to learn about natural fibers, especially those grown by animals: and I've been studying them for decades already.

And now I have an appointment with a goat.

That's colored kid mohair. Here, on top of it, are mostly yearling mohairs and a peek of another kid sample at the lower left.

It's magic: continually unfolding, everyday, in-my-hands magic.

Quote of the day: From Dreams from My Father, by B. Obama

From the preface to the 2004 edition of Dreams from My Father, by Barack Obama (New York: Three Rivers Press, p. vii):

"Almost a decade has passed since this book was first published [in 1995]. . . .

"Like most first-time authors, I was filled with hope and despair upon the book's publication—hope that the book might succeed beyond my youthful dreams, despair that I had failed to say anything worth saying. The reality fell somewhere in between. The reviews were mildly favorable. People actually showed up at the readings my publisher arranged. The sales were underwhelming. And, after a few months, I went on with the business of my life, certain that my career as an author would be short-lived, but glad to have survived the process with my dignity more or less intact."

Election day in a vote center

One of our vote centers is a terrific place to spend election day. It's strictly non-partisan. In the case of VC26, where I spent yesterday, it is also a calm oasis where the goal of all workers was helping as many people as possible vote, quickly and with technical support and warm encouragement, regardless of how they might mark their ballots.

If this post is a little less coherent than usual, it's because I'm short on sleep, although I wanted to continue my story of election processing because this is stuff I didn't know before I got into it.

Prep

The night before, Noah, our center's supervisor, called all of the judges who would be serving with him. He gave us his cell phone number in case anything came up or we had questions. He reminded us to be on site at 6. He told us that the church where our center was located would let us use the fridge and stove for our food (as it turned out, the church folks also provided us with hot water, coffee, two kinds of cookies, and a bowl of candy; it was lovely).

I had packed up food for what would be at minimum a fourteen-hour day and might drag on well past that. I had also planned to take a cooler, but after Noah's call I shifted to a less bulky grocery bag. Peanut butter on a bagel; a small container of sauteed tofu with chili peppers (the peppers turned out to be a great, spicy pick-me-up around dinner time); a couple of small bananas; "green juice" (SuperFood = liquid vegetables); a cookie, cut into fourths for quick nibbling; a container of yogurt; tea bags; and, although they ended up being inconvenient to eat and came home with me, an apple and an orange.

Getting started

Here's what the morning looked like when I headed for the vote center:

When I arrived, about eight people clustered outside the door. A few minutes later, Noah the supervisor and Connie, the site troubleshooter (second in command), arrived. As with everything else throughout the day, people had to work in teams composed of different party affiliations. That included opening the center.

By the time we got inside, the gathered group had expanded. Twenty people staffed this small center.

Election judges are sworn officials. It's a lot like jury duty. The work is paid . . . about as well as jury duty. Overall, our county had about a thousand election judges in action during this season. We also ended up with about 90 percent turnout of registered voters.

Here's how we were allocated:

• Greeters: 2 (greeters actually have one of the most challenging jobs . . . they make sure no election-related material comes into or within 100 feet of a voting center, and they also prep people to be ready for the computer judges)
• Computer judges: 4 (look people up in poll books, check or issue signature cards, direct people to correct balloting areas)
• Ballot judges: 6, working with paper ballots
• Electronic voting judges: 2
• Provisional ballot judges: 2 (including me)
• Ballot box judges: 2
• Supervisor and troubleshooter: 2

When any worker wanted or needed to take a break (get food, run to the restroom, stretch legs by walking up and down the hall), a qualifying person from another team would substitute or cover two adjacent positions. "Qualifying" means "of a different party affiliation." Independents and student election judges could pinch-hit anywhere. We had five student judges, who were high schoolers earning class credit. They worked regular stations, as computer, ballot, and ballot-box judges.

In addition, the center was occupied all day by poll watchers, also party-balanced, who arrived at the official opening time (an hour after we got there) and pretty much stayed all day. They had to be registered in advance and wore name tags. Unlike the judges, they were free to come and go, and although we generally had four at any given time at least one of them was there all day until closing.

I was initially a little confused when the poll watchers kept coming up to us and asking how many provisional ballots had been voted. Figuring it was just curiosity, we counted ballot stubs whenever they asked. (Toward the end of the day, this resulted in a little competition between the provisional ballot station and the electronic voting station to see who was processing more voters . . . we provisional judges won, but it was close.)

After a while, I realized that if there was a question later about how many voters had been processed by a station, the poll watchers would have information that was completely outside the carefully multiply-documented official system. They also asked perceptive questions about the process, fortunately when we weren't busy.

I discovered shortly after I arrived that I'd left my freshly brewed hot tea, in a cup with a cover, as we'd been told we would be required to use, at home on the counter. Fortunately, Noah said that folks who were not working near the computers could use mugs from the church kitchen, and there was hot water so I had time to make some tea by about 8:30 a.m.

Back to setup. The basics were in place: booths, tables, chairs, computers.

The ballots were in boxes on a large, rolling shelving unit that was shrinkwrapped. Teams cut the wrap off and inspected the boxes, all of which were sealed with security tape. We had lists of procedures that we'd been trained in that involved who was responsible for which boxes when, as well as counting and recounting ballots and filling out and signing off on other official paperwork. Chain of custody procedures were followed carefully throughout every piece of the process that I observed.

For people who were voting with paper ballots, our center had twenty-one privacy booths (those spindly-legged aluminum things). We also had one electronic voting machine. This particular electronic machine did permit voter verification of the votes before they were cast, and did produce an auditable paper trail.

By 7 a.m., we were ready to go and the first group of voters was lined up outside the door.

The day

The many hours didn't drag, although we were far from the busiest of voting centers. There were times when we'd joke about asking other centers to send us busloads, please, and times when people had to wait. After the early morning rush, I'd guess the longest wait for any voter at our center was about ten minutes. We had a few problems with phone lines and routers through the day, but thanks to the two backup systems we could, in general, proceed without delays. One of the county tech people spent about half the day at our site, but the problems did not have much impact on our work.

I did have a little time for knitting. I ripped back several times before I figured out that while working at a voting center even an experienced knitter needs a tally sheet in order to work a simple four-row twisted-rib.

There's a rule that no cell phones are allowed in the vote center. One reason is so that people can't take photographs. The bigger reason as far as the judges were concerned is related to my knitting problem: judges need to perform a large number of intricately intertwined tasks very quickly, and we needed to do them in a way that makes everything accurate and auditable. When someone's talking on a cell phone nearby, that becomes extremely difficult. We had a couple of people who got calls while in the center and getting them off the line became a top priority.

All the areas were color coded. I trained first as a ballot judge (regular paper ballots), so I had a purple manual. Then I was called in to train as a provisional judge (orange). This is also the fingerless glove I was working on as it looked by the time we started our closing procedures after the voting ended:

Over the course of the day, I especially enjoyed the diversity of the people who came through the center. Although it was located in a part of the city that I don't think of in conjunction with the word diversity, our parade could have exemplified that concept. We had people of all ages and a full range of ethnicities, sporting tattoos, greasy work clothes, or fancy suits. We had quite a few people who were not native English speakers.

There were two rules on the site:

1. No election-related material in or near the voting center.
2. Everyone who wants to vote gets to.

Everything else was a regulation or procedure: which form to use when, how to mark and file the paperwork, and so on.

In the provisional area, we saw all the irregularities. Mostly we helped people who were on the mail-in ballot list but had not received or had not voted or had damaged their mail-in ballots. They voted a provisional ballot so the tallying judges (elsewhere) could verify that they hadn't voted twice. We also saw people whose registered addresses did not match the addresses on the identification they presented. And anything else that didn't fit the norm.

One forty-ish woman who came in had never voted. She said she was not registered, but that her husband thought she could both register and vote on this day. It was past the registration deadline, but we told her that yes, she could vote. Her ballot almost certainly wouldn't be counted, unless she had registered at some time she'd forgotten (perhaps at the Division of Motor Vehicles when renewing her license), but at the very least she would be registered for the next time and she'd get practice in the process.

Not turning anyone away who wants to vote is my idea of a good time. At the provisional ballot table, we did a lot of education and a fair amount of soothing, because people are sometimes upset to discover they have to vote this type of ballot.

A lot of kids came in with their parents. We ended up holding (and bouncing) one three-month-old boy while his parents voted, his mother with a provisional ballot and his father on the electronic machine.

Noah and Connie could answer most procedural questions that came up, and in case of emergency Noah had what we called "the bat phone," with which he could call the county's highest election officials. We used it a couple of times.

Anything that was far enough out of the ordinary to require a consultation with Noah, Connie, or the bat-phone folks was written up in an incident report, so that it could be sorted out more thoroughly later.

Closing down

At 7 p.m., we closed promptly and according to the procedures in the manual. We counted and cross-checked all ballots. It's like balancing a checkbook about three times. We filled out more paperwork and signed off. Judges who were finished with their stations' duties helped out at other stations.

The unvoted paper ballots no longer have any value, so we sealed up the boxes for convenience but no longer needed to maintain chain of custody for them. The tallies of ballots and the voted ballots continued to be guarded and backed up vigilantly. The final tallies were recorded and transmitted in three ways:

1. One copy put into the sealed ballot box.
2. One copy given to the supervisor in the master paperwork for the center.
3. One copy given to the supervisor in a stamped envelope to be immediately mailed back to the elections officials.

Everything else was similarly documented with appropriate, not excessive, redundancy.

None of us could leave until the ballot boxes had been picked up for the final time . . . by the same team that had been transporting our ballot boxes at intervals throughout the day. One of the ways this semi-closed system works is that the people who are working together become familiar with who is there and who should be doing a particular job at a particular time. Even though we'd never met each other before, and I can't tell you the names or party affiliations of anyone I didn't work directly with or sub for, a sense of order, community, and responsibility prevailed.

We folded up and stacked the tables and chairs, and disassembled the computers and voting station. Soon the entire complex center had been reduced to a neat pile of boxes that would be moved the next day; a set of accordion files (one for each station); a green container with all the summary information for the center; and the final ballot boxes, one regular and one provisional.

We had been in a news blackout all day. After we were basically done, Noah checked his cell phone and gave us a couple of preliminary results: Ohio and Pennsylvania. When we left the center, that was all we knew.

As soon as the ballot-box couriers had arrived and the appropriate people had checked the necessary security procedures and signed the necessary papers for the last time, we were done.

Noah thanked us, and dismissed us.

Here's what the parking lot looked like as I left:

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Regular life waited for me to get back. Here are vote stickers on the computer log that I maintain to track changes to and events on the system:

 

My summary thoughts

I personally welcome the move to mail-in ballots, because I like the leisurely timing and ease of voting. However, if we lose our vote centers by changing to voting methods that do not bring people together physically then we lose an unusual neutral ground and a way of building community that seems unique and not easy to replace.

The U.S. Electoral College favored the Republicans in the last election and the Democrats in this election. Overall, I think the system is outdated and needs to be revised. I also think that revision needs to take place in conjunction with a shift to a system of preferential voting that would give people the flexibility to move away from the two-party lock on our government without potentially wasting their votes. It's time to take democracy to the next level, in many ways.

When I got home in the dark evening, I took down our yard signs. Regardless of anyone's sentiments, we now all need to pull together.

In terms of the results, if the country is run as well as the Obama campaign was, we'll be okay . . . or better.

Necessary respite (reading notes), plus a few election comments

If you live in the United States and haven't voted yet, Tuesday, November 4, is your day. Get in there and register your opinions officially.

I'll be at one of our local vote centers as an election judge from 6 a.m. until the work for the day is done. The initial time commitment was until 8 p.m.; that extended last week until "at least 10 p.m." We have been assured that we won't need to stay all night.

Makes just showing up to vote look more do-able, doesn't it, even if there's a line? In our state (and I think most places . . . I've voted in five different states over the years), if you're in line when the polls close you can still vote.

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In response to indicators of incipient personal burn-out, I did work on several necessary items this weekend but I also cooled my jets over the past week with some reading, none of it heavy-going (I couldn't have handled that).

From left to right:

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, by Seth Godin: Not a how-to book but a call to breaking out of molds and marching to our own drummers, gathering like-minded folks along the way. Lots of people I know are doing this, or on the cusp. This book encourages and articulates. Highly recommended for the conceptually minded.

Brave New Ballot: The Battle to Safeguard Democracy in the Age of Electronic Voting, by Aviel Rubin: I saw this book at the library, where the librarians had gathered election-related titles on a special display. I'm grateful that they put it there.

Avi Rubin is a computer scientist who specializes in security. While there has always been a risk of voting fraud, no matter what technology has been used, he differentiates between retail fraud (which affects a limited number of sites) and wholesale fraud (which can compromise a whole election). Previous systems were vulnerable to retail fraud. Electronic systems are vulnerable to wholesale fraud.

Rubin is not opposed to electronic voting—and he outlines the type of system that would allow electronic voting to be reliable, accurate, voter-verifiable, secure, and auditable—but he knows exactly how the systems we've been using fall short of what we need to make sure democracy remains democratic.

It's extremely well-written—as good as many mysteries—and clear and easy to understand, even for a non-tech-type. I learned some things about computer science that I'll actually remember.

Published in 2006, the last national election the book covers is 2004. I hope (and trust) that some of the safeguards mentioned have been put in place in time for the current election. I do know what the concerns are, why they matter, and how they can be fixed. That's HUGE.

Yes, I voted on a paper, with a mail-in ballot. That's my top choice of voting methods anyway, because I like the paper ballot and I prefer to have all the time I want for marking my selections (thus mail-in). Brave New Ballot confirmed that I'm not just being a stick-in-the-mud, at the same time that we do need a good electronic system to make voting easier for many people, including but not limited to people with disabilities.

Highly recommended for anyone who is old enough to vote, or will be.

The Shiniest Jewel: A Family Love Story, by Marian Henley: A graphic memoir (like a graphic novel, only true), this tells a story of near-50-year-old Marian Henley's journey to finding a family, including a son. It's funny and touching and a quick read. Thanks to Susan for leading me to it.

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Question: Are these people in our neighborhood in favor of or opposed to the McCain/Palin ticket?

That blue yard sign on the left is the usual McCain/Palin combination. There are two of those people with their heads (well, entire upper bodies) sunk in the ground, although only one can be easily seen in the photo (there's one foot of the other one sticking up at the far left). And a lot of other ominous symbols here.

The signs on the tree say, "BEWARE! / TURN BACK NOW!"

? ? ?

We live in a politically very mixed area, and I'll be interested in how our precinct results turn out tomorrow.

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And last night, an election-year tradition: a comedy/musical/parody show by an established group of local performers, the Mostlies (started out as "Mostly Not Ready for OpenStage Players," referring to what was then the only (?) community theater group). I've been going to their shows for about fourteen years.

They usually announce that no one will leave unoffended. I went with a group of friends (not all in agreement on politics), and we all laughed until our sides ached. It felt great.

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Our state, Colorado, is being treated as a battleground or swing state.

I've appreciated some ads our regional ABC-affiliate is running. They last fifteen seconds. They consist of videos representative of Colorado, a bit of type that says "political ad-free break," and a countdown indicator giving the number of seconds of relief remaining in the interlude. My daughter tells me there have been trees with snow blowing past, a ski slope with the lift ascending, and (earlier today) a really cute one with a puppy in the snow.

On using things up, and Halloween, plus continued training to be an election judge

I've got about eight blog posts that I haven't gotten written . . . running behind, while running all day.

Here's what the toothpaste and the hand cream look like this week . . . almost time to get new tubes . . . our days look similar, by the time we hit 11 p.m. or midnight:

And that's about what I feel like right now, too. Squeezed out.

There's dealing with the computer stuff (this week, both the ongoing layout software problems and some challenges with the publishing-company-specific financial software); and then, part of a new print run arrived in cartons so damaged I had to order replacement boxes and am repacking the whole shipment . . . and I have to do the job NOW in order to document any potential claim that might be filed with the carrier (there's a general post about damaged books in the publishing business that's working in my head); plus the details of scrambling to earn a living, because the delayed release of the book that's been stuck in software limbo dammed up the cash flow, which was adequate but not abundant in the first place. And my daughter has had two mid-terms and a presentation and one or two papers to write, which have complicated matters in the household. (Oh, yes, and the sebaceous cyst on the older dog's hip ruptured about ten days ago and we've been treating it three times daily, hoping to avoid surgery.)

Fortunately, I have lots of work of the income-producing kind to be done, in addition to keeping the publishing company alive. I spent two days this week doing preliminary work for one freelance job, and devoted sections of time every day to coaching another client through book-contract negotiations (yes, there's also an intellectual property lawyer in the mix . . . my job is to translate the contract terms into English, so the writer knows what he's signing). Oh, and reviewed and started negotiation on a contract for another job that I'll be doing (the company's never had anyone ask for changes to its extremely vague contract, so my relatively minor changes have been kicked upstairs to legal for review). And, of course, I've been working on the Major Writing Project, for which I do have a negotiated contract (it's in the wrong paragraph, though: it's not income-producing right now). Then I have a deadline on a freelance article (including photos) on Monday. It's half written, and I think it's going well. I just need the time and energy to keep doing everything that needs to be done. And figuring out how to keep the cash flow moving. With freelance work, much of what is done now gets paid for several months down the road.

In the middle of this, there was the fantastic concert by the Soweto Gospel Choir on Wednesday night that we won tickets to! I needed the break.

And the county elections office called up and asked if I'd have time (ha) to train as a provisional ballot judge, to supplement my training as a regular ballot judge, which happened on Tuesday night, so I did that yesterday afternoon. I've been assigned to a location that's conveniently located about two miles (3.2 km) from my house. I'm very grateful not to have been assigned to a vote center that's an hour from home! I'll be one of two people handling provisional ballots all day at that site. I have a feeling that parts of this election may hinge on provisional ballots, so I'll be glad to experience how they're handled in this county.

As we say around here when we're feeling overwhelmed, "Never a dull moment."

Nanowrimo starts today—the annual one-month stint in which people write whole novels, egging each other on. It's great fun, and definitely crazy. I've participated (and "won") the past three years, but I think I'll be sitting this one out. If "sitting" is what you can call what I'm doing.

I can't even focus on knitting, although I've been swatching (forgot the yarn-overs on one side of the second repeat of the pattern), knitting baby caps (that's going okay), and trying to get started on a simple top in handspun linen. The linen's been hanging around for a long time and I finally got an idea of what I might do with it. I'm doing okay with the baby caps. On everything else, I just feel scattered and like I'd better get up and do something else, even when I'm exhausted and it would be best just to sit and knit for a while.

But it was Halloween yesterday. I love Halloween, even when I don't have much time to put together a costume. My daughter needed to figure out an alternative that would fit with the dress code of the job she was working. She succeeded, and we were both amused by the cat walking the dogs.

You can't see her ears very well in that photo, in part because their color matched her hair so nicely. Here's a better look at them, along with a close-up of the REAL county animal license:

I had ears, too, which I wore to the election office. Mine were black-and-burgundy (they did not match my hair), and although we had another pet license that I could have worn I never had time to find a ribbon to tie it on with. Maybe next Halloween I'll get that part done.

Training to be an election judge

Last night from 6 to 9, I went through training to be an election judge. I'll be a Ballot Judge, responsible for ensuring that voters get the right paper ballots, if they choose to vote on paper—they can vote electronically with a touch screen as well.

Our county was apparently the first in the country to create "vote centers," so any registered voter within the county can go to any polling place. It's extremely convenient for voters, and has been a model that's been picked up elsewhere in Colorado and around the U.S.

The trick is that when people had to go to a precinct-specific location to vote, then reporting results by precinct was no big deal. When they can go to any of the vote centers, the ballots need to be able to be tracked by precinct and precinct tallies need to be collected in another way at the end of the day.

Although the elections office now only needs to find, staff, and supply thirty-three vote centers, each center needs to be prepared to provide a voter with any of 167 ballots.

Learning how this happens was pretty fascinating. The process is well thought out and looks like it will run smoothly. Each vote center starts with an original stock of ballots that, through math and guessing, reflects what history and experience suggest will be needed in that location. A computer program on site updates the inventory as every ballot is issued, and is set to indicate low supplies on any ballots. There's a runner system to resupply, if necessary, from another center (including the main one, at the courthouse).

It takes six judges to handle each center's paper ballot area. That's all I know about right now. The judges work in pairs, each of which has to consist of people with different registration status—you'd never have two Democrats, two Republicans, or two Greens (or whatever) working together. As an unaffiliated voter, I'm a wild card who can be assigned anywhere, as are the student judges—high schoolers, and the only exceptions to the rule that judges have to be registered voters (they're too young), although it was clear last night that the students who have been working on one campaign or another were going to identify themselves as party-affiliated for the purposes of election day.

I do have strong opinions on most of the issues being voted in this election, although they will be left far away when I do this job. I look forward to working in a balanced group with people of other convictions, especially since we will not be talking one word of politics in the vote centers . . . and will even need to ask anyone who turns up to vote in a t-shirt with any election-related information on it to step into the restroom and put the shirt on inside out before coming in to vote.

Next Tuesday will be a long day. We have to show up at our assigned places by 6 a.m. Anyone who is not there by 6:15 will be replaced by a backup. Voting begins at 7 a.m. and closes at 7 p.m., and the original commitment says judges will need to be available until 8 p.m., although the reality apparently is that judges stay until the job is done. The trainer wouldn't predict when that would be, but indicated that even if the day is complicated we should be done by 10 p.m. and we won't be spending the night there. After the voters have finished for the day (and anyone in line at 7 p.m. can still vote), there's a lot of tallying to do, although the votes are counted elsewhere (they're picked up during the day).

We cannot leave the vote center once we are there until we are dismissed at the end of the day, we need to bring all our own food, and we will not have access to fridge or microwave (it's okay to bring a cooler). Cell phones cannot be on or used in the vote center, although we can check messages and make short calls during any breaks.

The trainer was thorough, clear, and had good senses of both responsibility and humor.

Early and mail-in voting is now going on, and people have been strongly encouraged to use those voting methods, but still some of the vote centers here may process as many as 15,000 paper ballots. There are just over 174,000 voters in the county, and with the people who may show up and vote provisional ballots (they are qualified, but the county does not have, say, a confirmed address for them) there might be a final total from here—of all ballot types—of over 200,000 votes. People who have not received a paper ballot have been mailed express voter cards with all the necessary data (including ballot style) printed on it; anyone who forgets the express card can fill out a signature card on site.

While the early and mail-in ballots are already being counted, no one yet knows even starter results because they will not be tallied until starting at 7 p.m. next Tuesday.

By the way, I can go online to make sure my mail-in ballot has been received by the county, and if it hasn't I could vote a provisional ballot at the vote center next Tuesday that would be counted if my mail-in still hadn't shown up.

Rules governing provisional ballots were instituted modified at the federal level for more consistency among the states after the last 2000 presidential election, when people were turned away from the polls in some parts of the country. The Help America Vote Act of 2002 assures that ANYONE who shows up at a vote center can vote, on a regular ballot if their registration is in order and everything checks out, and on a provisional ballot if there are any questions. There are still variations in the way states use provisional ballots. Here, anyone who votes two (or more!) ballots, whether provisional or regular, will be checked out; all but one of the ballots will be disqualified; and if there's any hint of fraud . . . like something beyond normal "I didn't remember whether I mailed it or not" . . . the district attorney's office takes over immediately. [Did some research: Additions are underlined.]

Provisional ballots need to be counted by fourteen days after the election, and representatives of each party are normally on the phone right after election day to ask how many provisionals there are, to see whether any races could change results based on that late count. The trainer estimated that between 80 and 90 percent of the provisional ballots check out as okay and are counted in the final results.

I left the session last night hungry (it's hard to eat dinner when the work day ends at 5:30 and the meeting, across town, starts at 6 . . . half a PB&J had to tide me over) and also reassured that the voting process in this county will be orderly and as fair as is humanly possible. There are paper trails for all ballots, paper and electronic, and there have never been any chads here. The system looks controlled, professional, and balanced.

I'm impressed with the paper-ballot part of the operation, and what I can see from this angle of the rest of it.

On not seeing (or hearing) a major candidate in person, part 2 of 2

This is a continuation of yesterday's post.

After we'd stood in line for a while, my daughter decided to take another walk and see how far the line had extended beyond us, since the end was once again out of sight. I remained in our place, visiting with the people next to me—two of whom, it turned out, had gone to the same small college I'd attended . . . a couple of decades after I was there. This gave us quite a lot to talk about. They also had an extremely cute, active, and pleasantly distracting little kid with them.

Our scout was gone for a very long time. Something like an hour, maybe a bit more.

When she came back, she had located both ends of the line, with the intention of mapping the whole thing's extent and course.

By then it was a little after 3 p.m. The candidate's talk was scheduled to begin at 3:30. We had progressed a few hundred feet along the line. Even if the talk began an hour late, as political talks sometimes do, the amount of time it would take to simply walk the distance between us and the front of the line meant we were kind of unlikely to get into the Oval before the event was over. My daughter had homework to do, and my back and knees were beginning to object to the hours of standing on concrete . . . and if I was home I could always spend the time trying out yet another way to get around the glitch in the layout file for the book.

So we decided to improve the chances that a few of the people behind us in the line might get into the Oval by taking ourselves out of the mix and heading home.

Here are some of those people whose prospects got better because of our departure: part of the line about 3/10 of a mile (.5 km) east of where we'd been standing, photographed as we walked back to our bikes.

Here, out of sequence, is the map we assembled after we got home:

• X: Where we parked our bikes.
• Red: People standing in line; looked like they were averaging about three across.
• Green arrows: Direction of movement toward the Oval (we walked in the opposite direction to find the end).
• Section shaded light orange: The part of the line shown in yesterday's photos.
• 1: Where we joined the line.
• 2: Where we were in line when we decided to call it a day.
• 3: Location of the end of the line at the time when we left.
• Scale: Note the 1/10 mile (161 m) indicator at the lower right. By the highly scientific method of marking the distance on a piece of paper and marking off intervals on a printout of the map, the extent of the red line shown on the map above is about 2.7 miles (4.3 km).

Homeward bound, my daughter and her bike (my bike is almost identical: same scratch-and-dent sale, although we haven't found the scratches and dents yet):

On the bike ride to the political gathering, I had declared that on the way home I intended to get a photograph of a particular piece of public art. I've passed it a number of times, but it's at the base of a long grade on which I am not inclined to stop if I have any momentum at all. It's the sort of slope where I just keep going slower and slower and slower until it seems like I'm going to be going so slowly I'll fall over and have to walk up. I haven't had to walk it yet, but there's always that risk.

Anyway, we did stop for pictures and here's the sign, seen along with the upper half of the hill, which doesn't look so bad when you're not pedaling up it:

Here's a close-up, taken from the other side, with the sun at a more favorable angle:

The person at the top of the triangle is dressed in slightly different colors on the two sides.

The sign's thought seemed appropriate to the day and the gathering, as well as the hill.

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The online version of the local newspaper was doing regular updates of what was happening at the political event, and when we arrived home the website indicated that the political candidate had just started speaking.

Monday's newspaper called it a "partisan crowd," which it mostly was, although I saw at least one person standing in line wearing a jacket with a bumper sticker for the other party's candidate neatly applied to its back. The paper also estimated that there were 45,000 to 50,000 people in the Oval. It also said, "Lines started forming before 5 a.m. . . ., many crowding into the Oval at the last minute, some never getting in at all."

By our observation, while there were "some" people there before 5 a.m.—and even at 11 a.m., when the paper estimated the line was a mile (1.6 km) long, going in a direction where we couldn't have seen it from the main road as we drove by after our breakfast—I'd have said that "many" never got in at all, based on the length of the line past the point where we were standing.

I heard by e-mail from the folks who'd been next to us: when the speech ended, they had moved to about 200 yards (180 m) outside the entrance (which we actually thought was darn good progress). There's no telling how many people abandoned their positions in all parts of the line, as we did ours, or if the line kept growing after we departed.

On most Monday mornings, I have a meeting at a coffee shop across the street from position 3 in the map above. This morning the staff said that their shop and all of the other restaurants in the area had been crowded all afternoon with people who'd taken a look at the line and decided to bag it and go sit in comfort instead of standing around.

It's hard to guess how many more people would have attended if the space had allowed. Another quarter? Half again as many?

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In sum: my daughter and I had a great bike ride on a pleasant afternoon; met some new people we're glad to know; and got a photo of a sign we'd been wanting to document. We also got to do some great people-watching.

But I still haven't seen or heard a major political candidate in person.

On not seeing (or hearing) a major candidate in person, part 1 of 2

I've never seen a major political candidate in person. Yesterday one was scheduled to speak in our city at 3:30 p.m., and because the location was within biking distance of our house my daughter and I rode down to the location.

We knew there was a chance we wouldn't get in, because we had breakfast with a friend first instead of going to get in line multiple hours in advance of the event. We decided before we left that it would be okay if we just went to the area, spent some time looking at what was going on, and then went home.

The campus is normally sparsely populated on weekends. We started noticing higher-than-usual traffic when we were about a mile away.

We arrived about 1 p.m. and parked our bikes. The gates to the Oval, where the gathering would take place, were scheduled to open at 1:30. At about 11, when we'd driven by after our breakfast, we estimated the line at around 500 feet (150 m), although we were just eyeballing it from the main road. In any case, it looked like the lining-up had gotten well started but wasn't outrageous.

One thing that was cool about the event was the fullness of the bike racks and the emptiness of the parking lots. People had been asked to use alternative transportation, and they did. A whole lot of people biked and walked. The city, which normally has no Sunday bus service, also scheduled one special route that operated from 10 to 6 to bring people into the area. (Post-event buses that we saw later in the afternoon were packed, even near the end of the run.)

This is just one set of racks by the library that I snapped a picture of while we were looking for the end of the line.

The line was growing very quickly—faster than we could walk, so it kept growing away from us, although we didn't realize that until we did finally locate the end, close to where we'd started.

Here are a few photos of the line when we started our search for where to join it. They are sequential, taken as a pseudo-panorama from where I was standing on the west side of the student center. They show the portion of the line that extended from the library along University Avenue west to Meridian, then north to Plum Street/North Drive. I estimate the distance covered in these pictures as about 1/2 mile (.8 km). Then the line turned west again and went out of sight.

 

When we got to the corner of Meridian and Plum/North, at about the location of the near-leafless tree in the photo just above, we looked west:

The people with their backs to the camera are all, like us, walking along in search of the end of the line.

We walked quite a distance, enjoying the people watching. By Moby Gym (technicallly Moby Arena) and the McGraw Athletic Center, some kids were entertaining themselves in a characteristically Colorado fashion. 

We took a shortcut through some of the football practice fields (and got our feet soaked because of overwatering of sod) and, 35 minutes after we started walking—shortly after the official opening of the gates to the Oval—we did join the end of the line.

To be continued, with a map and some additional commentary on the news reports on the size of the crowd as contrasted with our in-person observations.

Caps for babies; and boxes instead of dingbats

Knitting small caps out of scraps

While I was traveling last week, I encountered a copy of the brand-new Luxury Yarn One-Skein Wonders, edited by Judith Durant (with whom I used to work at Interweave Press: good person). It's got 101 projects for small amounts of yarn. Obviously, they're designed for luxury yarns, but they work for leftovers of less fancy yarns, too.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm making a few caps for babies-at-risk again this year (Knit One, Save One; or Caps to the Capital . . . the last collection of caps occurred in 2006). Before heading for New Mexico a couple of weeks ago, I grabbed a couple of free crochet patterns off the web and didn't use them directly but interpreted the concepts using my yarns, hook sizes, and finished sizes. During the trip, I completed two caps (on the right above) and read half of one book for pleasure. (The dark cap is alpaca and very, very soft. I finished the book after I got home.)

Then, on the next trip, I picked up this new one-skein book. It contains a whole lot of great patterns—some by designers I recognize and admire, and some by designers I don't recognize and also admire. I wish the designers' names were on the table of contents, because I follow specific designers and am always interested in what new folks are doing, but given the number of patterns it's understandable why they aren't. The table of contents is full. The patterns themselves are clearly identified as to source, and it's fun to leaf through and discover whose brain was behind which concept.

A very useful attribute of the book: the information is organized by size of yarn, which is how I look for it.

For the hats I'm making now, I'm using a pattern created by Kathy Elkins (of Webs), although I've changed the yarn weight, gauge, size, and starting stitch count (thus, also, shaping intervals). The multicolored version at top left was a winging-it adaptation of my version. For the brown one on the lower left, I tweaked the pattern again for a different yarn weight and I'm liking my results better. I have a third cap in progress now in worsted-weight yarn (like top left) and I think I've got all of my alterations the way I want them. All the caps are usable, though; they're just getting more refined for use with different yarns and in smaller sizes.

My previous post contains all the necessary information to participate in this project; I added some of the details in the comments after folks inquired.

And there's a nifty and appropriate crochet pattern I just located on a blog called A Chelsea Morning.

There are lots more patterns worth exploring for other purposes in Luxury Yarn One-Skein Wonders. I'm grateful for the chance to explore it with needles in hand so quickly. That doesn't happen often. I usually have to wait until space clears in my life to try out ideas in a new book.

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Computer notes

There haven't been many computer comments lately in part because I've mostly been on the road and in part because not all that much has changed. I'm still paddling upstream on this project, with the file and the machine misbehaving for reasons no one can figure out well enough to fix.

Here's the good news: the book (Ethnic Knitting Exploration: Lithuania, Iceland, and Ireland, by Donna Druchunas) has an index! And the index is in the book file.

Only once did the layout program give me a random paragraph of dingbats (one of its bizarre symptoms of glitchiness). The new twist was that these dingbats were green. The rest of the dingbats it's given me have been blue. The quirks are getting more creative? (Computers are NOT creative. They follow specific rules of behavior, which are sometimes scrambled. But still specific.)

On the bad news side, and I'm ignoring this for the moment, some of the REAL dingbats that are supposed to be in the file have been replaced by blue boxes with Xs through them:

Those two pages (one example of several affected spreads) are supposed to look like the next photo, which I am only able to show you because I generated a PDF of the working file a while ago when that font was working as it should:

It takes a lot of time to design, size, and position those symbols that are aids to the reader in using the diagrams, charts, and worksheets throughout the book. Having them get messed up is worse than having some other things mess up.

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Turning away from computers and toward civic responsibility

This afternoon I signed up to be an election judge on November 4.

I've already voted with a mail-in ballot.

Yes, I have a gazillion other things I "ought" to get done that day. However, I am not good on phones or at canvassing to encourage people to vote. What I can do is show up at the county courthouse before 6 a.m. on election day and work steadily as needed until 8 p.m. or later to facilitate the orderly progress of the election for those who are voting then. (The vote centers are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.)

I'll be what's called a backup judge. That means I'll start my day at the courthouse and can be sent out to work at any of the thirty-three polling places in the county, as needed. The county consists of 2601 square miles (6737 km²) and about 277,000 people.

I'll be training next week as a ballot judge. It's a three-hour training session, because any resident of our county can vote at any of the centers (this is a very cool thing) and there are 130 different ballots that people may need to have access to, depending on where they live. It will be my job to help people vote the right ballot.

If you're in the U.S., remember to vote before the election closes on November 4.