Lamb and Frog

That’s what Evil Jamie says I’ve been…and she’s right. My face is scrunchy. My shoulders are shruggy. I am really, really cranky (in case you couldn’t tell from that last post).

Then, sometime this week, or maybe it was late last week, our “president”got on TV to issue a proclamation (he actually used that word). I don’t even remember what it was about…I just stared at the TV and screamed “Proclamation!?” This is too much. Now he’s king (not that people haven’t been saying that for years). Well, here are my responses to King George (in priority order):

Mr. Bush, please listen to this (or maybe have your wife read it to you).

Mr. Bush, up yours! This isn’t our first rodeo (in case you didn’t understand the big words in that first link).

Mr. Bush, the times, they are a changin’.

Mr. Bush, the countdown to your exit has been on for a long time now, but now it’s so close we can almost taste our freedom…again. I (and I don’t think I’m alone here) am personally telling not just you, but your entire bunch of pandering acolytes, sycophants, and toadies (I threw that last one in there so that just in case you actually read this post you won’t have to send a serf to get your wife or her dictionary), “We the people” are pretty pissed. I’m hoping and praying that between the old hippies (you know who you are), the new hippies (people my age), and the really new hippies we have the right mix of experience, vigor, and idealism to start a new world order.

Vote early. Vote often. And (my fellow New Mexicans) don’t vote drunk!

Don’t know that one? Keep reading.

I am a (deeply flawed) woman of faith, so it is rare when I can completely agree with Christopher Hitchens…but he nailed it in this anti-obituary for that unapologetic racist imbecile Jesse Helms.

Actually, there is one little tidbit with which I beg to differ. Hitchens says that it seems “somewhat profane” that Helms died on Independence Day. I, on the other hand, see it as his birthday present to the rest of the country.

Helms is the exception to the rule that it is wrong to speak ill of the dead. Adios mother fucker.

Well. Uhhh.  I haven’t really finished anything in a couple of months. I finished knitting the Stolen Moments wrap a couple of weeks ago. But I still haven’t weaved in the ends or blocked it. I finished one of the (many) Christmas scarves yesterday…same story on the blocking and the ends. Otherwise, all my projects are huge (two afghans) or are getting more limited knitting time in the queue.

I’ve finished two audio books: The Scarecrow of Oz and The Return of Sherlock Holmes, both courtesy of librivox. I also finished a most excellent book of short stories by Elizabeth Berg: The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted and Other Small Acts of Liberation. Obviously, the audio books are classics. The Berg book was absolutely amazing and, because of the format (short stories), makes for excellent summer reading.

Yup. I haven’t finished much. I am, however, making good progress on both the Log Cabin blanket (instructions can be found at Mason Dixon Knitting) and on the latest big blanket of doom (ball 6 of 12). Unfortunately, there’s another big blanket of doom on the immediate horizon. Stinky liked mine, so he asked me to make one for him. In the meantime, the Duck also decided he needed one.

I have also started even more stuff…for me and others. I have two more Christmas scarves OTN. As I said, I started these in Crystal Palace Taos. While perusing the stash the other day, however, I found some Patons SWS and thought it might work. I’ve only done a few row repeats, but it is gorgeous too. It makes a more subtle, elegant scarf than the Taos…equally lovely, but different. So, the new plan is to add a bunch of people to the scarf list and to knit about half a dozen in each of the two types of yarn (which may leave one of each type for me…gee, I’d like that). We’ll see how far I get with that, because I also think that my Dad is going to need a (huge) hat made out of the SWS…it’s not only beautiful, it’s really soft and awesome to work with (not that the Taos sucks mind you).

I started, and frogged, another market bag. I decided the nylon yarn I was using didn’t work with the Solomon’s Knot pattern. I’ve also decided that the mega market bag works great for chips, paper towels, toilet paper, and other large, light items, but is too big for most other stuff.  I’m planning on re-working that design to make it a little smaller and creating a new design (with a different pattern for the mesh) for the nylon yarn. Still, I’ve put the bags aside for a little while to work on other projects. So much for offering the pattern in July.

I’m about half way through the Montego Bay Scarf from Interweave Knits Summer 2007. I’m using a rayon ribbon yarn (love it) that was in the stash instead of the recommended Sea Silk (which is not in the stash…bummer). The pattern is easy, but elegant and the ribbon yarn, although it makes a much less airy scarf than the Sea Silk, is making a really pretty scarf with great drape. If I had had more of the ribbon yarn (Berroco Glace) I would have made a wrap (or a scrap) instead. But I’m still pretty happy with how this one is turning out. I’m still having the ‘to fringe or not to fringe’ debate in my head. Normally, I’m not a fringe person, but fringe is an important part of the original pattern and I’m thinking it might work, even for me, on this scarf.

I’ve even been working on the ribbed tank top and my red Nutkin socks. I’ve got about three or four inches of tank top body done and I’m about 3/4 of the way through the first Nutkin. I may finish it later today (love those short-row heels!).

I’ve got at least three other sock patterns in the immediate queue and I really want to get back to the market bags and crank out some dishcloths…so much knitting, so little time! I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted any pictures. I’ll try to get some taken this week (but in case you haven’t already figured it out…don’t hold your breath).

to start one’s Christmas knitting? Gee, I hope not. I started mine Thursday. As usual, I set the bar low. A simple (but purty) drop-stitch scarf pattern using Crystal Palace Taos (two, maybe three balls per scarf). The pattern is easy and knits up super fast but the result, especially with this yarn, is fabulous. I may even move the bar a little higher and add a couple of people to the ’scarf list’…right now there are only four lucky recipients (Aunt Connie, Shannon the Textile Goddess, Cousin Becky, and Kentucky Julia…this is not revealing anything, they’ve each gotten a scarf from me for the last two years and, unless I get way faster at socks or I see any of them wearing a hat, this is not going to change any time soon). I’m going to see how many of these I can crank out between now and December. I’m thinking I can do a bunch (I’m hoping eight or ten)…why? Because after starting one scarf Thursday, I can see that the self-patterning yarn will fascinate my easily amused self, just like the Noro did last year, just like self-patterning sock yarn always does (mmm, yarn, pretty). I’ll probably have four OTN simultaneously before you know it. And guess what? One is gonna be for me!

Everyone else’s stuff is shit and your shit is stuff? Yes, George was full of the wisdom of the ages.

In her column today on MSN Money M.P. Dunleavy talks about “The High Price of Too Much Stuff” and notes how the rise of the small storage industry has corresponded with the rise in easy credit and Americans’ overall consumer debt. Not only are we buying more stuff, we’re having to pay rent on a place to store it (this even though the average home size has gone up and the average family size has gone down over the last 30 years). Not surprisingly, the storage industry person she interviewed with the article begged to differ. Based on what he has seen from auctioning the contents of abandoned storage units, many are used for the following:

• Old tax returns
• Newspapers
• Collectibles
• Their children’s old toys
• Their parents’ old belongings

Old tax returns I can understand, sort of. Aunt Connie has a degree in records management and I can assure you that “it’s complicated”…of course, whether or not it needs to be complicated is a different rant entirely. But why, oh why, is anyone saving old newspapers? I’ll tell you why, the answer is right there in the list, item number three, the insidious…collectibles.

Thanks to the MSM (main stream media) and Americans’ seemingly never ending capacity for both stupidity and consumption, many of us (at times even me) have been duped into thinking our shit stuff is, one of these days, going to be collectible (and, consequently, worth more money than we paid for it). People, I’m telling you right now that, by and large, this is a load of shit stuff.

It’s a trick, right up there with “stock up and save!” and “the more you spend the more you save!” to get you to buy a bunch of something you don’t need with the hope (not promise, hope) of maybe one day making a profit on it. I’ll save “stock up and save” for another day. Today, I just want to talk about collectibles.

My first memory of the collectible phenomenon comes from the 1980s–Cabbage Patch Kids. They were the ‘hot’ Christmas item. The ‘must have’ toy of the season. A big part of this memory is a teenage me walking through a shopping mall at Christmas time with my mom. I saw a little girl smugly toting her (impossible to find right now, I have one, you don’t, neener neener) dolly through the shopping mall and told my mom “I’d really like to run snatch that thing right out of her hands zoom past her a ways and stomp on on it.” I didn’t even want one of the damn things, I was just appalled by her audacity. Anyway, they were the hot toy that year. According to whom? The MSM of course! But at some point shortly thereafter this child’s doll changed from being a toy that was designed to be played with to something that adults were buying in bulk and keeping in the box (somewhere…maybe a storage unit, maybe a separate room in a bigger house that is only used to store shit stuff) with the hope that they would be really valuable to someone at some as yet undetermined time in the future…maybe they are. I don’t know and I don’t care. I didn’t want one then and I don’t want one now.

Flash forward a decade…to Beanie Babies. I bought a bunch of those. At the time, I had a lot of disposable income and I liked them. I only bought the ones I liked. I never lined up to purchase one. And today there’s a box of them in my gardening shed. Am I keeping them pristine to fund my kids’ education? Hell no! I finally got tired of looking at/dusting around them and boxed them up. When the kids are wanting a new stuffed toy or deserve a reward, I let them pick one out of the box…and then I cut off the ear tag and they play with it! In other words, they aren’t collectibles…they’re toys!

Flash forward another decade. Now we have e-Bay and online shopping. Now I can’t find my kids the action figures they want at the store because ‘collectors’ are snapping them all up as soon as they hit the real and virtual shelves and then trying to get double or triple the prices in online auctions or as ‘third party’ sellers. Not from me they aren’t. They’re toys for the love of yarn! I’m not paying twenty bucks for a five dollar action figure that my kids are going to break or bury in the dirt within a week of (try not to cringe…) taking it out of the box!

The collectible phenomenon has been helped along by shows like Antiques Roadshow and Cash in the Attic but again our collective stupidity comes into play. Most of the items on those shows are ‘found’ items or have been handed down as family heirlooms…not purchased and held like a good stock in the hope (again, hope, not promise) that they will get more valuable over time. Between the collectibles industry (who makes a fortune convincing us to buy and hold onto a bunch of something completely frivolous), the MSM, and our own stupidity we not only grossly over consume…we never get rid of anything (hence items four and five on the list, you can’t tell me all of that shit stuff has sentimental value).

Here’s a plea to stop the insanity in the words of Lester Burnham “It’s just stuff!” Can we all admit that, in the end, it’s just stuff? Buy the stuff you need. And, by all means, buy some of the stuff you want. But please, oh please, stop buying stuff to hold and sell unless you really, really know what you’re doing (that means unless you can support yourself doing this and only this). Seriously, buying stuff is never a way to save money and, only in rare cases with “I’m going to be a Major League Baseball Player” type odds will it ever make you money. If you want to save money, put it in the bank. If you want to make money, work. It’s really that simple.

Oh yeah, and imagine, just imagine the gauge effect of a bunch of us buying and storing less stuff…gas saved on moving the stuff from one place to another, energy saved because less stuff is being manufactured, people living in (and heating and cooling) smaller spaces because they don’t need such a big place “for their stuff”. Now there’s something to hold onto.