I heard today about the death of Odetta, a folk singer whose music I remember listening to when I was a little girl. It's been a couple of weeks since Miriam Makeba died--I *loved* listening to her when I was little--and a couple of weeks before that, it was Studs Terkel. (I didn't know about him until I was an adult, but I think he had a lot in common with those two great singers.) Their deaths make me wonder who from that generation and area of endeavor might be next to go--a morbid thing to think about, I know, but not that strange, I guess.

When I heard about Makeba, I immediately ordered her first album on CD; it took more than two weeks to arrive, which I took to mean that a lot of people were just getting reacquainted with her music. I don't think the kids are as crazy about it as I am, though, when we were driving to the supermarket in a sleet storm on Sunday, Astrid seemed to agree heartily with me that Makeba's voice sounds both "fiercely joyful" and "joyfully fierce."

Sad Mano-Warmers

My office is fre-free-freezing now that winter has hit Chicago in earnest. I regularly use a neon-green blanket on my lap (where no one can see it), but I can't type with my hands under a blanket. So, over the past couple of weeks of surfing, I was happy to see the many fingerless glove ideas around the crafty blogosphere. As always, I was sure I could improve on the ideas I'd seen. For one thing, with the gloves that start with a sleeve from a felted wool sweater, I was worried that I'd get itchy--so I decided to line my cuffs with some cotton lycra. That seems to have been an okay design change. But I also thought I'd use some of my many, many yards of foldover elastic to keep the cotton and lambswool together around the knuckle area. Bad idea, as the photo shows. The one without the foldover elastic is goofy-looking enough. I'm not sure how I'll approach my next pair.