Any Signs of Life?

This, my friends, is my current work situation.

Before you shout opprobrious epithets at me (and if anyone can trace that quote, well, I don't know what I would say), about working not just from home, but working from in bed, please let me explain, there are very good reasons.

I've got a bit of a trick back, and sitting at a desk for long hours - even with ergonomic chairs, and health and safety adjusted monitor heights, and footrests, and wristguards and all the other office junk - has a tendency to make my back go ow, loudly and repeatedly. And the loud and repeated ow causes the expenditure of vast sums of money at the osteopath, money which could be better spent on, oh, let me think, more yarn. So sometimes, when I have a lot of reading to do, I find that a tasteful arrangement of limbs and draping of hand-knit blankets, on something which I can pretend is a day-bed, makes life easier.

But at the moment, I've resorted to full blown comfort, because at the moment, I am enduring torture, of the academic kind. For mysterious reasons, I am doing some copy-editing on a little collection of papers. Now I'm only a lowly postgrad, but I like to kid myself that I have a reasonably amicable acquaintanceship with 'good' writing. (Most of which, I must point out, I learned from Helene Hanff and Q.) So why do professional - paid - academics try to get away with a pile of complete and utter squit? It's wrong, I tell you, wrong! They have PhDs, and research funding, they have jobs, and reputations, yet with all that, they can't bloody write. Spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, illiberal uses of commas and colons (yet they can all use an apostrophe - huh?), unintelligible referencing, all wrapped up in an inability to come up with a coherent argument and stick to it. It's wrong, I tell you, wrong!

So for self-preservation, I've gathered all necessary supplies, including 'zle, and taken to my bed.

The good news is that 'zle is done, and puz' is almost finished. And with a push tonight, I shall polish off that last final zee. A finished object, an actual finished off the needles washed and rinsed and wrung out all pinned, almost ready to wear tomorrow object. Frabjous days ahead.

Finally, on a blog etiquette note - what is the best way to reply to people who have wrestled with word verification and left comments/questions? Until I know better, I'll just answer here.

So, for Daisy, I think I used just over 5 skeins of Maya. (I say I think, because I am crusin' for a bruisin' from the knitting gods, and have 'misplaced' my clapotis notes. So I weighed it on the kitchen scales, and it came out at 521gms. Now, if each skein is 100gms, oh, you do the math!)

For Becky, how exciting, moving to Oman. But surely a light delicate clapotis in a linen, or silk, or linen and silk mix would be very pretty, and very useful, and not too warm?

Littlelixie and Andrea and ra (whoever you are), thank you for the welcome.

Hazel, go for the wrap, it is so much fun to knit.

Anonymous rootbeer guy - the answer is yes (with credit!).

And Judy, don't you just want to run away with Roger Livesey's voice?

(ps any mistakes on this blog are not the fault of the operator, but are solely caused by brain-curdling academics)

edited 23/9/05 because I can't use an apostrophe. Thanks, pup! You know, I could say I was making an ironic point, but no, I was just wrong.