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?????