OK. What's with all the Socks?

• Socks are a little miracle of knitting. For about $20, or less, depending, you can get enough yarn to make an entire garment. No big investments in 8 balls of such and such.
• Socks are forgiving in fit, so it's OK not to be perfect. If your feet are different, then you can custom-fit your feet. My feet are long and narrow, and socks tend to be a little short, but not when I made them myself.
• Sock construction is like magic. A few decreases, a few short rows, picking up a few selvage edges, and BOOM you've turned a heel.
• A fast knitter on a mission from God can turn out socks in a hurry. There is no months-long commitment like with a sweater.
• Socks are portable. I carry a pair with me all the time and fit in a few rows every time I have to wait for something, like the doctor, or my lunch order. They fit nicely in my bag or even a jacket pocket. Try carrying around a blanket.
• Socks are an excellent way to try out weird colors or small amounts of different yarns. Tofu! Bamboo! Hunting-season orange!
• Socks are an excellent way to get accustomed to color work. Maybe you want to try a traditional Scandinavian pattern but are terrified of a project on the scale of a sweater. Do socks with a fair isle pattern and move up when you master the technique.
• Socks are almost the only way to make an affordable cashmere project.
• Socks freak out non-knitters. Who in her right mind would spend 20 dollars and 40 hours on a pair of socks when you can buy gym socks at Nordstrom three pair for ten dollars?

What does Bunny want for Christmas?

I assume that most of you don't care. You shouldn't care. I'm OK with that. However, there is at least one person who wants to know. If that's you, read on. If not, then see ya next time at Dirtbunny.net.

1. Yarn. Bunny wants yarn. I know I already have yarn, but I want yarn. Especially sock yarn. Enough of one color to make a pair of adult-sized socks. An excellent source for sock yarn is here. This is another. I am especially fond of Fleece Artist merino right now, but I also like Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, Cherry Tree Hill, and Koigu. And I'm willing to try new things. And if you pick a color that you like, I will happily knit them up and send them back to you in a couple of months.

2. Needles. Bunny wants sock needles, sizes 0 to 2 1/2 US. I like wooden ones best and I love Lantern Moon seven inch rosewood needles (So does YB. Don't ask.)

3. Stitch keepers. These great little doohickeys may keep Bunny's socks from falling off her needles when she isn't working on them. Bunny generally works with 6 or 7 inch needles in sizes 0-3.

4. Books. Bunny wants Socks, Socks, Socks and The All-Natural Diabetes Cookbook.

5. Bunny would like a stylus and tablet for her laptop. This is an example. I'd want a good-quality one, but I'm not exactly a graphic artist over here.

Hokie

Historical rival of the Wahoos. They generally kick our butt in all manly he-man sports but we have the edge in prep school sports like lacrosse. We make ourselves feel better by acting like we are smarter and better than they are. Give them their due: their engineering school is very very good. Still. Who names a school mascot after a castrated turkey?

St. Julia

Julia Child. If she is the spiritual leader of the cooking sect Chez Nous, then the sacred text is The Way to Cook. The book is big on technique and careful instructions and is a large part of the reason why Bunny is not afraid to tackle pretty much any recipe that sounds like it would make for good eatin'.

Stinky Stuff

Fancy body lotions, scrubs, shower gels, bath salts, bath oils, creams, powders, etc. Also includes scented candles, essential oils, and incense. May include things like spa booties, eye pillows, moisturizing gloves, etc. Does not include makeup or perfume.

Glutton Place

A fancy provisions store known locally and colloquially before the latest buyout as Glutton Place Gourmet. Now owned by Balducci's, but we are slow to adapt to new names around here.

Stuppid

Very very very stupid. So stupid, can't even spell stupid.

How do you tell them apart?

My goodness. How does a mother tell her children apart? They barely even resemble each other. Kirby has a high forehead and a cleft dome whereas Tiki's head is flatter and his eyelids are blacker.

Oh. You probably want something more obvious and simpler.

OK. The first two are Tiki. His collar and bling are red and he is often wearing a harness. He is a tri-color with blue ticking, which is a snotty purebred dog association way of saying he is the classic beagle black-tan-white combination but with spots. He has brown spots on his legs and black spots on his belly and chest. Also, Tiki has a white blaze between his eyes and another one down the back of his neck.






Kirby is a plain tri-color. His bling is blue, and he has no spots. His chest and legs are white.




They are both gorgeous, if you ask me.

Because they're rescue beagles, their parentage is unverifiable, so I don't know whether they are purebred or not.


UPDATE:

Someone, and I'm not naming names, lost Kirby's combination collar when he, I mean, this unnamed person, dropped The Boys off at the dog spa and resort. Kirby will be wearing Tiki's red combination collar until we get around to replacing the blue one. For the time being, Tiki is the one with the red bling, but the blue harness, and Kirby has the blue bling, but a red collar in addition to his regular blue collar. How's that for color coding?

National Airport

What the locals call Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Congress can go through a frenzy of renaming things after its conservative idols if it wants, but the airport in question is in one of the bluest counties in the commonwealth. National it was, National it stays in our hearts, minds, and vernacular. When someone talks about flying into/out of “Reagan,” we know we’re dealing with an “other.”

Plus Norfolk=nawfuk

Louisville=Loo-i-vull but never Loo-ee-vill

New Orleans can be at lot of things as long as it isn’t New Or-LEENZ. What are you, some kind of Yankee? Jeez. Ohio is thataway.

Fresh Fields

What Whole Foods Market used to be called around here before the merger/buyout/whatever. We’re slow to adapt to new names around here. See also National Airport.

WTF?

This is an acronym. The WT stands for "what the" and the F stands for something else.

Turtle

1. What Kirby does when he's scared and doesn't have time to find a bed to hide under, as in "he went turtle," "he's in turtle mode," "he did a full-on turtle." Consists of making oneself into as small a ball as possible and pretending to be oblivious to the outside world. Sometimes accompanied by trembling.
2. The University of Maryland Terrapins, as in "fear the turtle." A local favorite inside the Beltway, but some of us get sick of hearing about it.

Wahoo

A fish that drinks and drinks and drinks until it dies. At least that's what they told Dirtbunny during first-year orientation at the University of Virginia, home of the Wahoos, aka Hoos.

The Boys

Collectively, YB and GK.

GK

Kirby, aka Gentle Kirby, Gentleman Kirby, Kirby Tattletale, Little Buddy, Special Boy, Comrade Kirbamov (he used to be Prince Kirbsky before the revolution), the Kirbinator, Der Kirbenhund, Kirbamente, K-hole (when he is grumpy and shuns Bunny, which is not often), Number One Son. Named after Kirby Puckett, who had one of the best sports names ever. A very shy beagle who is afraid of a great many things, including anything loud (thunder, lawnmowers, vacuum cleaners, garbage trucks, school buses), scary (big blue mailboxes, trash cans, garbage bags, landscaping boulders, large SUVs parked down the street), frightening (strangers [especially men, and especially big men, and especially if they are talking or wearing hats or allowed to come into the house], women pushing strollers, people on bicycles, children [especially if they are friendly and want to touch him]), or unfamiliar (pretty much anything different from the way it was before, such as rearranged furniture, or a briefcase left on the kitchen counter). Likes: Bunny, ice cream, naps, food, playing outside, and The Man, in that order. Dislikes: when Bunny leaves, when Tiki steals the spot next to Bunny, when Tiki steals his treats, anything scary (see above), getting humped at the dog park. Special talent: when he’s really happy, such as when he’s playing outside, he prances (with an adorable high-stepping trot, tail flicking from side to side) or leaps around like a rabbit. Never barks. Sleeps with tongue out. Likes belly rubs but won’t roll over on his back to get one. Has allergies, so is itchy and gets a lot of medicated baths. Can’t/won’t jump up, so needs a boost to get up on the sofa next to Bunny. Has learned to go find The Man to ask for a boost when he wants up.

Why all the pidgin French?

Like millions of other graduates of public high school, Dirtbunny took French. She also minored in it in college. She never got fluent and has now forgotten most of it. However, she remembers enough to pepper her conversation with the occasional French II level vocabulary word because it makes her feel smart and worldly. This impresses no one. The ignorant think she's a pretentious snot. The sophisticated think she's a pretentious idiot poser. Both are correct.

Frogging and tinking

Frogging is when you rip out knitting. Just take the needles out and rip-it, rip-it. Tinking is undoing knitting by undoing stitches in a sort-of backward knitting thing. K-N-I-T T-I-N-K Very clever. I did not invent these terms.

Is Bunny a Rebel?

Yes. Here is some irrefutable proof of my rebel bona fides:

• My mother told me to stop picking. I'm old enough to be covered by the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, and I STILL PICK AT ZITS AND SCABS so I win.
• My parents do not approve of my potty mouth. But I cuss anyway.
• When my boss gives me back work with corrections that I think are stupid, I put the file on top of my bookcase and ignore it for a whole day before I grumblingly do what he wants.
• I rarely wear name tags or complete evaluations at conferences.

What's with all the foul language?

Q: Really, Bunny, must you cuss all the time? Can you truly not express yourself with other words from your vast vocabulary?

A: My vocabulary is not as vast as you may think. I may brag about being an educated person who sometimes reads books, but I went to public high school where, in my senior AP English class, we read Macbeth and spent about six weeks dissecting The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and did a lot of Calculus homework because the teacher didn't feel like teaching that day. I got enough B's on high-school English papers for reasons such as "ragged margins" and "flimsy cover" to turn me off serious books for a long long time. Not to mention that it didn't really seem to be important what I had to say if my margins (this was -gasp- before computers) were not lovely.

But you were asking about the cuss words. I'm cranky and I cuss. It makes me feel like a rebel when there is really nothing remotely rebellious about anything I do. It is an authentic part of my voice, so it stays.

Maybe my voice sucks.

Great. Now I need to call my therapist. Thank you so very much for your question.

Economy Plan

Bunny and The Man bought a lot of stuff in 2007, including 1.8 billion dollars worth of landscaping. Now Dirtbunny has too much debt to quit her job. Thus, we are Cutting Back so as to reduce debt. Not so much by actually cutting discretionary expenses (of which there are puhlenty), like a rational household. More by obsessing over the details. Examples include:

• feeling compelled to consume obscure pantry items like bottled clam juice and whole wheat pastry flour
• feeling compelled to consume half-empty liter bottles of diet tonic water
• tearing hair and rending garments over the number of skin-care products accumulated in the bathroom cabinet
• feeling thrifty by knitting crappy projects with shitty left-over yarn (thereby using it up) when there is plenty of fun and lovely yarn in the stash that is already paid for and could be used to make something I'll actually like
• keeping the housecleaning service, dog walker, and digital cable and feeling no remorse, but waffling repeatedly on whether to keep the $18 per month Netflix subscription

Vampire

Four times a year, Dirtbunny goes to the vampire, i.e., her HMO's lab, and has blood drawn for assorted tests. This is not fun. Bunny's veins are hard to find. It hurts and leaves a gross yellowish bruise. The lab tech always worries that Bunny is going to faint, but Bunny never does.

YB

Tiki, an overweight, friendly beagle who likes to eat yarn, collect trophies, bury rawhide in sofa cushions and behind bed pillows, and pretend to be housetrained. Needs a lot of attention and is cute enough to get it. Also known as Yarn Bandit, Puddles, Little Hoser, Mr. Personality, Tikipoo. Named after famous Wahoo runningback Tiki Barber who (unfortunately) played for the NY Giants. Likes food, people, and sitting in the sun. Bays at squirrels and other intruders in the yard.

HHH

Hazy, hot, and humid. Duh. You must not be from the South.

KWH

Knitting While Hypoglycemic. When her blood sugar gets too low, Dirtbunny gets stupid(-er) and makes mistakes. KWH is not worth it, because it usually results in frogging or tinking.