If you missed my introduction post to this series, you can read it HERE. To recap real quick, each week I am sharing my pandemic experiences in an effort to help others feel less alone. Escapism matters too, so we are also running a book club and knit-along. To go straight to the book club portion, which will contain spoilers for this week’s book (Fool Moon by Jim Butcher), scroll down to the next big header. If you’d like to skip straight to the KAL, scroll down to that section at the bottom. They are both clearly labeled so that you can easily find or avoid certain sections as needed. 

We are living through a poorly scripted, B-level apocalypse movie. I don’t mean one of the movies that can score The Rock to star in them either. Our apocalypse is gonna be lucky to cast a lesser Baldwin to star in it. I think that all rational folk agree that people are by and large not in a good headspace right now. And I’ve noticed that my moods fluctuate rapidly between three modes: 

1. Raging, unfiltered anger that is generally expressed through sarcasm 
2. Grief over what I’ve lost, what Mabel has lost, what everyone I know has lost 
3. Guilt over grieving non-fatal losses, and guilt over having so much when others have less. 

Today, I want to talk about number three. Because it’s something I’ve struggled with for most of my life, the study of class-guilt is of particular interest to me. I’ve written about privilege before and, while they are similar, I want to take a beat to acknowledge that the idea of owning privilege and trying to wield it for good is inherently different from the notion of class guilt. 

Privilege as a concept is neutral. Privilege and money are not synonymous with each other, but certainly go hand in hand. Today, I want to approach it from that perspective. For the purpose of this conversation, we’ll oversimplify a bit and say that privilege = money. Some people are born with a lot of it. Some people marry into it. Some people acquire it through hard work and merit. Some people never get any regardless of their hard work or merit. The contrast between the haves and the have-nots is especially sharp right now. 

I’m a “Have”. It’s a subjective statement, there are certainly lot’s of other Haves in the world that would see me as a Have-Not. But while I write this I’m sitting at my computer in a house with internet, heat, a stocked fridge, and Disney+. It’s Have-central over here. I’ve been a Have-Not. I’ve been in the situation that despite working full-time I was not able to afford rent, groceries, and utilities. Something was always being paid critically late. I remember when Jac and I first moved to Philadelphia from Indiana, living in a run-down, slumlord-owned apartment that had heat occasionally and running water some of the time. There was this one notable night that we didn’t have anything in our bank accounts because we had just paid bills. I’m talking negative balances. And we also didn’t have anything to eat except for one slightly stale corn muffin and a can of peas. To this day, we occasionally talk about the night we split that corn muffin and can of peas, and we felt lucky to have them. 

Last week, I cried because I couldn’t go get a haircut. Then, I cried because I was crying over a stupid hair cut. Jac called to tell me that she had a dream about going to Target. When she woke up and couldn’t go, she was super depressed about it and did it make her a bad person when so many others have it so much worse? How could we, having lived through the kind of poverty that we have, be so disgustingly privileged as to have such an emotional response to going without a few minor creature comforts? Kevin buzzed my undercut for me, and did a good job actually, but the experience itself was awful. Feeling terrible over feeling terrible is a special kind of pandemic-penance. 

So how do we, mere mortals, cope with guilt over having so much when others have so little? How do we extrapolate our privilege from our guilt? The first step is to remind yourself that you are not a bad person for missing the life you had before the pandemic. It has changed nearly everything about our everyday lives and it is normal to feel upset/sad/scared/depressed over the loss. The second is that any privilege you might have right now is a tool that you can use for good, and that having it doesn’t mean you’ve taken it from someone else. I’ll go a little further into this next week, but for now I want you to focus on two specific things: 

Your feelings are valid. 

Would you ever tell someone who is mourning the loss of a pet that they should just suck it up because at least they had a pet? Lots of people don’t have any pets to begin with! No. You wouldn’t. Because that’s an outrageous thing to say. So if you are grieving the loss of a luxury/non life-sustaining item, whether it’s a trip to Target or a haircut or whatever else, you shouldn’t tell yourself that you are being ridiculous for missing it. Those creature comforts are benchmarks for a lot of us. The reason the haircut hit me so hard is that over the past decade I’ve busted ass to bring myself to a financial place that I can afford to get a decent haircut at a decent salon and without realizing it, that had become a way that I showed myself I’m not the girl eating half a muffin anymore. I don’t know why that was the thing that I latched onto, rather than getting out of debt, or affording fancy Montessori School for Mabel the Merciless, but the human mind isn’t known for being super rational. The point is, don’t beat yourself up over missing things. 

Being part of the solution doesn’t mean single-handedly saving the world. 

This isn’t your fault. You didn’t cause this pandemic. Assuming you aren’t hoarding all the food and supplies in your town (and if you’ve stuck with me this long, chances are that doesn’t apply), you having food to eat, utilities, internet, yarn, and anything else doesn’t mean that someone else doesn’t get to have them. The fact that there are people who are struggling badly right now is not related to you having the things you need. We should all be doing what we can to help others, but you are not personally responsible for feeding every hungry child. Listen, I GET it. I feel that way too. But deep down you know that even if you gave away all of your food and literally everything else you have, there would still be people going without. The point here isn’t to make you sad about that, but to say that doing what you can is enough. It is helping, and it is making lives better. When we all pool our good deeds and resources, that’s how the larger population gets helped. On top of that, privilege is not a pie. You having a slice doesn’t mean that there is one less piece for everyone else. 

There’s more to say here, but what I want you to take away with you is the reassurance that it’s OK to miss the things you used to have, and that doesn’t make you insensitive or an outlier. We all wish things were different. 

BOOK CLUB

contains spoilers from ‘Fool Moon’ by Jim Butcher

Before we talk about the specific details of Fool Moon, I believe it’s important to pause for a brief PSA:

I don’t care if he’s your magical familiar, do not feed Coca-Cola to a cat! 

Ahem. With that out of the way, let’s talk about Fool Moon.

The second book in the Dresden files is still not Jim Butcher’s peak writing, and that’s forgivable. This is only his second novel. I like this one though. It gives you a ton of insight into the relationship between Karrin Murphy and Harry Dresden. That relationship is one of the best things in these books. You’re only hearing it from Harry’s side and I’ll get into that in a minute, but I love that she is someone who isn’t afraid to shoot her friend, to arrest her friend, or to generally throw him a beating if she feels it’s in the public’s best interest. Full Moon also introduces us to the Alphas, a gang of nerdy werewolf college students, and foreshadows the relationship that Harry will have with gentleman Johnny Marcone over the course of the series. Johnny is frankly one of the best written characters here. I’m a big fan of an anti-hero, and Johnny Marcone is very “Magneto” in that he’s doing bad things for what he sees as the right reasons. 

I want to focus on the relationship between Harry and Karrin in this post, but the overall point of the book is that Harry begins to see by the end that there may be a connection to the terrible things that seem to follow him. It won’t surprise you, even if you’re reading these for the first time, to find out that if a new side character is introduced to Harry’s life there’s a really good chance they’re either a bad guy, or going to come up again in future books. So it’s not exactly a big twist at the end that the FBI agents, who were jerks from the moment they stepped on the page, turn out to be rampaging werewolves. This book is less about solving the mystery, and more about setting the stage for the future. And I think it does a very good job of that. If you can overlook the cringe-worthy sex scene, it’s a solid book. Also, Harry gets his leather duster in this book and I’d argue that the duster functionally becomes a main character in it’s own right. I wish the book had more Mac (the owner of McAnally’s Pub, which caters to supernatural clientele) in it, but I think any page without Mac could use more Mac. 

Karrin Murphy is a bad ass, but is very much written in the way that too many male authors write women. She’s frequently described as emotional, petite, and as behaving like a somewhat generic “damsel”. It’s hard to extrapolate if that is because that’s how Harry, an absolutely disgusting chauvinist (and here I don’t really think he wins any points back for acknowledging that chauvinism) would describe her or if she is just Jim Butcher’s manic-pixie-dream-girl. Having read all of the published books in the series, I regret to inform you that Harry Dresden is not going to outgrow referring to grown-ass women as “cute”. Jim Butcher frequently writes incredibly powerful women into the series. As the series goes on, that actually increases. I mean legitimately secure and powerful women with agency outside of their relationship with Harry. So I don’t know if this is me just projecting what I hope is true onto the series or if Jim butcher himself frequently thinks of adult women as “cute”, but I think that probably this is an issue of Jim trying to be honest about Harry. 

That said, I hope that you’ll forgive me because I’m going to be an apologist here. Harry Dresden has been through some serious shit. The thing is, he’s not actually had any reasonable role models to demonstrate what a healthy relationship (romantic or otherwise) ought to look like. His mother died before he was born, his father died when he was extremely young, followed by a string of negligent foster homes, and finally he was taken in by his evil mentor, Justin. During his formative teenage years, he was raised in a supervillain’s lair. His only other significant male role model has been Bob the skull, a sex-obsessed being of intellect and air. You’ll find out in a later book that after Harry killed Justin he was taken in by Ebenezer, who seemed to do right by him, but at that point Harry was nearly an adult. So I’m willing to accept at face value that Harry literally doesn’t know the difference between chivalry and chauvinism, and that deeply colors the way that he experiences the world. Susan, who we get to see a little more of in this book, is really the first time that he’s been in a relationship that was somewhat healthy. 

In Fool Moon, Harry briefly references Elaine, his childhood love, and that she died in the fire that killed Justin — a fire Harry set — because she was Justin’s evil acolyte. Critics of the Dresden Files regularly use Harry’s interactions with women as a bit of the poster child for misogyny and white male rage. I’m not saying they’re wrong, but the challenge you run into with this is that it’s in first person from Harry’s perspective. So we’re hearing the inner monologue of a deeply flawed person as he goes on a journey of growth. He does grow. I think that Harry respects Murphy on a fundamental level but he doesn’t know how to relate to her. He knows that being called cute would bother her, but he intrinsically doesn’t understand why it would bother her. He feels he’s complimenting her, so he makes no effort to stop saying it. I’m left having a love-hate relationship with him. I understand why he is the way he is, and I’m rooting for him, but he exemplifies a lot of toxic masculinity, particularly in the early books.

YARN STUFF

I’ve got WIPs for days.

Blue Beetle Handwarmers, Clue 2

You can find Clue 1 and the abbreviation key in the Pandemic Parenting post. For additional information on recommended yarn, needles, and gauge, please scroll the the bottom of THIS POST to find it. If you’re struggling with the optional beads and/or hate pre-stringing them, check out this quick and easy tutorial I posted on Instagram.

Instructions:

Break Color A; Join Color C. 

1 (C) K1, K2tog, P1. [K1P1] to marker. K4, Sl1, K3, Sl1, K4. [K1P1]x4, SSK, K1, P1, K1, K2tog, P1, [K1P1] to marker. K4, Sl1, K3, Sl1, K4. [K1P1] to last 4, K1, SSK, P1. 

2 (B) K2, P1. [K1P1] to marker. Sl1, K1, Sl1, K2, Sl3, K2, Sl1, K1, Sl1. [K1P1]x4, K2, P1, K2, P1 [K1P1] to marker. Sl1, K1, Sl1, K2, Sl3, K2, Sl1, K1, Sl1. [K1P1] to last 3, K2, P1. 

3 (C) K2, P1. [K1P1] to marker. K3, Sl1, K5, Sl1, K3. [K1P1]x4, K2, P1, K2, P1 [K1P1] to marker. K3, Sl1, K5, Sl1, K3. [K1P1] to last 3, K2, P1. 

4 (B) K2, P1. [K1P1] to marker. K1, Sl1, K2, Sl2, K1, Sl2, K2, Sl1, K1. [K1P1]x4, K2, P1, K2, P1 [K1P1] to marker. K1, Sl1, K2, Sl2, K1, Sl2, K2, Sl1, K1. [K1P1] to last 3, K2, P1.

5 (C) K2, P1. [K1P1] to marker. K2, Sl1, K3, Sl1, K3, Sl1, K2. [K1P1]x4, K2, P1, K2, P1 [K1P1] to marker. K2, Sl1, K3, Sl1, K3, Sl1, K2. [K1P1] to last 3, K2, P1.

6 (B) K2, P1. [K1P1] to marker. Sl1, K2, Sl2, K3, Sl2, K2, Sl1. [K1P1]x4, K2, P1, K2, P1 [K1P1] to marker. Sl1, K2, Sl2, K3, Sl2, K2, Sl1. [K1P1] to last 3, K2, P1.

7 (C)K2, P1. [K1P1] to marker. K1, Sl1, K3, Sl1, K1, Sl1, K3, Sl1, K1. [K1P1]x4, K2, P1, K2, P1 [K1P1] to marker. K1, Sl1, K3, Sl1, K1, Sl1, K3, Sl1, K1. [K1P1] to last 3, K2, P1.

8 (B) K2, P1. [K1P1] to marker. K2, Sl1, K3, Sl1Bd, K3, Sl1, K2. [K1P1]x4, K2, P1, K2, P1 [K1P1] to marker. K2, Sl1, K3, Sl1Bd, K3, Sl1, K2. [K1P1] to last 3, K2, P1.

9 (C) K2tog, P1. [K1P1] to marker. K1, Sl1, K3, Sl1, K1, Sl1, K3, Sl1, K1. [K1P1]x4, K2tog, P1, SSK, P1 [K1P1] to marker. K1, Sl1, K3, Sl1, K1, Sl1, K3, Sl1, K1. [K1P1] to last 3 sts, SSK, P1. 

10 (B) [P1, K1] to marker, P1. Sl1, K2, Sl2, k3, Sl2, k2, Sl1. [K1P1] to marker. Sl1, K2, Sl2, k3, Sl2, k2, Sl1. [K1P1] to end. 

11 (C) [P1, K1] to marker. K2, Sl1, K3, Sl1, K3, Sl1, K2. [K1P1] to marker. K2, Sl1, K3, Sl1, K3, Sl1, K2. [K1P1] to end. 

12 (B) [P1K1] to marker, P1. Sl2, K2, Sl2, K1, Sl2, K2, Sl2. [K1P1] to marker. Sl2, K2, Sl2, K1, Sl2, K2, Sl2. [K1P1] to end. 

13 (C) [K1P1] to marker. K3, Sl1, K5, Sl1, K3. [K1P1] to marker. K3, Sl1, K5, Sl1, K3. [K1P1] to end. 

14 (B) [K1P1] to marker. K1, Sl2, K2, Sl3, K2, Sl2, K1. [K1P1] to marker. K1, Sl2, K2, Sl3, K2, Sl2, K1. [K1P1] to end. 

15 (C) [K1P1] to marker. K4, Sl1, K3, Sl1, K4. [K1P1] to marker. K4, Sl1, K3, Sl1, K4. [K1P1] to end. 

16 (B) [K1P1] to marker. Sl2, K1, Sl1, K5, Sl1, K1, Sl2. [K1P1] to marker. Sl2, K1, Sl1, K5, Sl1, K1, Sl2. [K1P1] to end. 

17 (C) [K1P1] to marker. K6, Sl1, K6. [K1P1] to marker. K6, Sl1, K6. [K1P1] to end. 66 sts. 

Note: An error was found in round 1 of these instructions and has now been corrected. It originally read [K1P1]x4, SSK, K1, P1, K2tog, and should read [K1P1]x4, SSK, K1, P1, K1, K2tog,

Jac decided to cast-on a pair for our baby sister Alena, and she accused me of having “tiny elvish pixie stitches”. In my defense, she is a loose knitter and is using Adventure, a slightly heavier fingering weight than my Vacation Minis, but if you would like to decrease the amount of cast-on stitches because you’re like Jac and “refuse to go down to US 0s,” I have a brief walkthrough on adjusting the pattern to meet your gauge instead of the other way around. I’m basically going to copy and paste below what I said in the Ravelry forum thread where we’re chatting about the Dresden Files and the KAL.

The top and bottom of the glove each feature a 13 st panel where the slipped stitch colorwork will happen. This is the set up round with that panel highlighted:

Set Up 2 (B): K1P1x6, Place Marker. K2, Sl1, K1, Sl2, K1, Sl2, K1, Sl1, K2. Place Marker. K1P1x12, Place Marker. K2, Sl1, K1, Sl2, K1, Sl2, K1, Sl1, K2. Place Marker. K1P1x6.

On either side of those are ribbing, and you want an equal amount of ribbing on both sides of the panel on both the top and the bottom. As written it calls for 12 rib sts, then the 13 st panel, then 24 rib sts, then the 13 st panel, then 12 rib sts. You can decrease the rib sts as much as you want to result in a glove that’s appropriate for your gauge, but you want to decrease it evenly across the ribs. So think of it as 4 rib sections: rib1, panel1, rib2, rib3, panel2, rib4. All the rib sections should contain the same number of sts when you start, the thumb will go between ribs 2 and 3, so treat them as separate sections when decreasing sts so the thumb stays centered.*

So, you can decrease/increase the stitch count in multiples of 8, decreasing/increasing 2 from each of the ribbed panels. I wouldn’t recommend decreasing more than 24 total, but unless we are talking about chunky yarn and large needles I can’t see why anyone would want to decrease more than that from the cast on. For sport weight on US 3, I’d recomend decreasing 16 (casting on 56, and then increasing to 58 on round 1 after the cuff). From there, work it as written, but any time it references working a specific number of K1P1 ribs, decrease 2 from that repeat. So, for example, on the set-up round 2 I showed above, you would work Set Up 2 (B): K1P1x4, Place Marker. K2, Sl1, K1, Sl2, K1, Sl2, K1, Sl1, K2. Place Marker. K1P1x10, Place Marker. K2, Sl1, K1, Sl2, K1, Sl2, K1, Sl1, K2. Place Marker. K1P1x4.

*Just to head it off at the pass now to not create confusion later, the thumb will not actually be perfectly centered, it fits best being just a stitch or 2 off of centered between the 2 rib sections, but that’s a note for clue 3.

Adios for now! I’ll see you next week with clue three and my thoughts on Grave Peril.

~Megan-Anne

Errata: Blue Beetle Handwarmers, Clue 1, Round 17 should read:

17 (A) K1P1 to marker. Sl2, K1, Sl1, K5, Sl1, K1, Sl2. K1P1 to marker. Sl2, K1, Sl1, K5, Sl1, K1, Sl2. K1P1 to end. 

This correction was made on the blog post, but if you started before 5/4/2020, you may have gotten the version with an incorrect round 17.

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