Sunday More-than-Seven (busy week)

For the local larger ladies:
I've discovered a consignment shop off Veteran's Highway called Curve Appeal. It carries only sizes 14 and up, and prices ranged from $7 jeans to a $70 leather-and-fur 3x coat. A bit of trouble to get to (my GPS thought it was further down the highway than it was) and it's only open Thurs-Sat, but for those prices? Worth it.

For the foodies:
1) Ripped up garlic naan makes fabulous "dumplings" in chicken soup.

2) Do not make chicken stock in a crock pot; it stays too watery.

3) Dinner in 15 minutes: ( Recipe for steak & garlic spinach, with an individual apple crisp )

For the Knitters:
At Stitches I discovered Boye Jumbo Stitch Markers (I've since seen them at JoAnnes as well). Their unique locking mechanism (a peg at 90 degrees to the main circle that fits quite snugly into a loop on the other side) means that they lock tight and need some serious fussing to open up again.

Which means that they make fabulous row counters, because you can yank on the chain you've made and it won't pop loose. With three colors per pack, you can use color coding to flag differences in stitches: I intend to make a chain with "pink for purl row" and a "yellow for yarnover" for the many garter/stockinette/yarnover patterns I've seen.

Right now for the WUA knitalong, I've made a chain with a different colored first loop and then (to make sure there's no counting involved at all) hung three of the padlock-style markers on the last loop. Every time I hit the end of the chain, I mark the row with the little padlock that's right there and start going down the chain again. On the 4th run down the chain, it's time to change colors.

So far, it's perfect. The markers are a bit bigger than I would have chosen had I the choice, but they're secure, and because they're loose loops, they're easy to flip out of my way as I knit around them. (The chain itself serves as one of my stich markers for the pattern.)

Sunday Seven:( This week I have accomplished )

Today I need to:
1) Go over the bills
2) Pack for ChicagoTARDIS (including shoving another set of audiobooks onto the ipod and setting up a word processor on the Asus, but probably not including making the Torchwood Babiez T-shirt at this point)
3) Write my entry for the cross-cliche ficathon, titled "UNITwood."

Civics 101, from the biased to the misspelled

Via peggin: US Officials Flunk Test of Amerian [sic] History, Economics, Civics.

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute made up a civics test - well, in my opinion, it's a little bit of civics, a little bit of history, and a whole boatload of "New Deal awkward, unfettered free marked GOOD, mmmkay?" - and gave it to 2,500 people. The average citizen got slightly less than 50% correct, which is dumb but not unexpected.

The officials got 44% correct, which is also no surprise.

Some of the ISI's findings are as dubious as Yahoo's spelling (watching TV dumbs down understanding of civics? Really? Even West Wing?) but the call for more civics classes in school is a good one...

...JUST as long as it isn't, as the test is, a tiny bit of history, a tiny bit of Constitution, and an overwhelming amount of "unfettered free market is good, mmmmkay?" ETA: Probably not: according to their About Us page, our nation's founding principles [are] limited government, individual liberty, private property, a free market economy, personal responsibility, and ethical standards.

Well, three out of six is about what everyone is getting on their quiz.

(For those keeping score, limited government is arguable; they were more interested in Federal vs State rights, free market is absolutely NOWHERE in any founding document or Founder's argument, and the anti-slavery portions of the Continental Congress would have a few statements about "ethical standards.")

Test here. My score, 87.88%, which isn't half bad considering that I had to stop and reason my way through a couple of the questions. (Honestly, what the heck does "Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas would concur that:" have to do with American civics? Okay, I know, but shouldn't the question be about their direct affect on the drafting of our founding documents?)

FIC: UNITWOOD

T3, WhoDaily: a href="http://neadods.livejournal.com/759501.html">UNITwood by lj user="neadods"> (UNIT family, Four/Sarah Jane | PG | no spoilers)

TITLE: UNITWOOD
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: none
DISCLAIMER: Unauthorized doesn't begin to cover it. Everything property of the BBC.

Written for hhertzof for The Cliché-Swap Ficathon. Contains Four/Sarah Jane, UNIT family, and all the Torchwood cliches I can think of.


UNITWOOD


"What's this nonsense about you outside the government and police, what, what?" barked the very clipped, very irritated voice on the other end of the telephone.

The Brigadier sighed. "No, sir, you have it a bit backwards. To drive here, you go outside the Government building, turn left, keep going until you're at the intersection beyond the police station, turn left again, about three miles you take the exit to Little Pickering and four miles after that is our secret base. You can't miss it; there's a big sign saying UNITWOOD."

There was a horrified squawk from the other end of the line, in which the words "opsec" and "official secrets" and "bloody idiots" merged into one noise of outrage.

( 'It does say that unauthorized personnel should keep out,' the Brigadier said defensively. )