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A Serious Post On Politics, Sorry

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Statistically there is a twenty percent chance that Sarah Palin will have to act as President of the USA someday - a fact based upon presidential history* - or an even greater chance if you also factor in McCain's age, his medical history and his unwillingness to release current medical records. Bearing that in mind, Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric is the most terrifying thing I have seen in a long, long time. And now the McCain campaign has been suspended. The Republican presidential hopeful has rushed to Washington to give everybody a good piece of his mind and instead of letting the VP nominee do her job of stepping in for McCain, he has called off everything for the moment. Although, come to think of it, would you let Palin debate politics with Barack Obama if you were her boss?

Clive Cook's piece was written before the suspension of the campaign but his observation is even more interesting now:

"I do think Obama is handling the crisis much better than McCain--not because he is suggesting better remedies (he continues to say little), but because his instinct to reflect before opening his mouth and his impeccable taste in advisers are both working to his advantage.

These factors I think are much more important than the supposed popularity of standard Democratic positions on economic management. Unlike McCain, Obama offers no instant bold responses, needing to be qualified or withdrawn or forgotten soon after. As ever, he looks calm, methodical and unruffled--and has his picture taken in conference with Paul Volcker, Bob Rubin and Larry Summers, who command wide respect. His response may be thin, so far, on content, but it is an altogether more reassuring posture than his rival's tendency to hasty and exaggerated certainty.

Finally, as a self-identified Humanist, knowing that Palin was somewhat recently blessed to be free from 'witchcraft' is just unfathomable and, again, terrifying.

I'm struggling here, America. I really am.

*according to Lawrence Lessing

Drape Happens

I began knitting the Lush and Lacy cardigan a few weeks ago with my lovely alpaca-silk yarn. If you know me, this may surprise you as I am not really a 'lush and lacy' person, but I was tempted by the idea of a tomato red silky cardigan in a feminine vintage-ish style. I would wear that, oh yes. As you can see by the photo, I am no longer knitting a cardigan nor is my work-in-progress particularly lacy. What happened?

Drape happened.

If you are used to working with textiles, you know that drape is important. It is how the fabric falls or hangs. When you are planning a knitting project, you try to match the drape to the pattern. Some patterns call for a rather indiscernible drape while others incorporate drape into the design. When choosing yarn, it is important to remember that silk and cotton drape more than lambswool or merino which both have good stitch memory.

When I chose my yarn, I knew it would have a lot of drape. The cardigan would put the drape to good effect. Perfect. Except when I had pretty much finished knitting the back of the cardigan, I was looking at the floppiest flap of fabric that had ever flupped. And I still had to knit the two fronts, two sleeves, sew it all together and pick up stitches to knit details. I knew it wasn't going to happened because the end product would look like a giant tomato had just coughed up a dead alpaca goat on top of me. Not exactly a stylish vintage-ish knit.

So I ripped it all out and started over. This time I am knitting a very, very simple top-down raglan* top as you can see in my photo. It is knit in one piece and because the pattern is so minimalistic, the drape will be able to work to its advantage. I'm using St. James as my template although I am going to modify the pattern slightly. The sleeves will be much longer (because I live in Scotland) and the neckline a tiny bit different. And I'm very happy with how it all looks thus far.

And in related knitting news, my knitting group was filmed by Scottish TV last night because we are so damn hip. I was goaded into being interviewed by TangledFrog but I think I managed to sabotage the interview by mentioning astrophysics. I am not sure if the programme will air outside Scotland but I will keep you posted. Unless I feature heavily, of course.

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Ow, ow, ow.

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Being back at work - a topic not fit for blogging, obviously - and nursing a migraine - a topic not really blogworthy - cannot be said to be conducive to blogging. I have, however, been knitting a fair bit. Stayed tuned for "exciting" pictures and pattern ruminations. There is also that little thing about being filmed by Scottish TV tomorrow evening..

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Straight From The Hip

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Life is an steep hill sometimes and I just have to keep climbing. Long story. Not blogworthy. Thankfully I have life drawing sessions tomorrow which is a cheering thought. Two time-wasters for you: how good are you at discerning accents? and How Long Could You Survive Chained to a Bunk Bed with a Velociraptor? My scores were "I was very tired when I tried that" and "I'm so going to die" respectively.