Best Quote I Heard All Day
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.--Abbie Hoffman

Happy 4th of July. Now, can we get out of Iraq and get rid of Dubya? I think that's putting the cart before the horse, though.

Woodstock may be over, but some of us remember the sentiments of the era.

Non-knitting Holiday
I can't tell you how uninspired I've been the past week. I suppose it's due to my new job but I seem to be treading water with the Taos pullover. If I got 10 rows done this week, that's a lot. And during the three-day weekend, I played cards, played softball at our little family picnic yesterday, went swimming, went shopping, shaved my legs. And barely knit at all.

Everyone goes through stages, I guess. I've been going around and around with three projects for so long, my knitting tastebuds are dulled beyond belief. But I refuse to give into my itch to start something new.

My rule of thumb is: No more than three projects going at the same time. Ask Loopy. She knows that I stick to this religiously. It's the only way I get anything done. Therefore I am committed to finishing the Taos and then moving onto the next book project, which will be the tastefully beaded socks.

Sexed-Up Knitty
I have to say, I thought this past issue of Knitty was really trying much too hard to be "hip." And you know how much I hate "hipchic." The projects, other than Joan M-M's, were simply dull and stultifying. In other words, not exciting. Really, sex doesn't sell, not in this issue. However, no one, but no one, does knitted lingerie as exquisitely as Joan. She's a genius with the details that are so necessary when applying knitting to a garment genre like that.

This time around, most of the articles were a waste of time--meandering, and in the long run, boring. The only technical article was on grafting--and if you want to learn, it's a good one. And although in need of some good editing (as in, cut it to half its length), I thought the Knitters Against Bush article was mildly interesting. Not that you can really take this "movement" terribly seriously but it seems to me that there's quite a few of us needle freaks who'd like to trash Dubya in November. (As a sidebar, I wonder if warshcloth and toilet-paper cover knitters tend to be Republicans. I mean, stupid is as stupid does.)

As knitting magazines go, Knitty seems to be going the way of the rest of them, unfortunately. I certainly understand Amy's need to include advertisers and that's a good thing. I like reading knitting ads. But for the past few issues, the content's quality has been so uneven, both in the designs and the articles.

Having been an editor myself, I understand the difficulty Amy probably has in getting quality material. Nonetheless, it seems to me that the magazine has become a watered-down version of its former self. Initially, I supported Knitty because I felt it would give the knitting magazines a run for their collective money. I'm not so sure that it will. There have been too many mindless, silly projects, and not just in this issue, either. Knitty needs to start getting serious about knitting instead of fucking around.

Mudslide
Yeah, I never put up pictures of my family because frankly, who cares other than me? But since I do occasionally mention the various and sundry characters of the Roberts clan, here's a picture from yesterday's 4th of July picnic, during which Liz attempted to coat herself entirely in mud. It was great fun...for her. She was wise enough to leave the adults out of it and include only her friends.

This was nothing compared to the end of the mudslinging.

And here's my charming family with their significant others.

From the bottom, working clockwise, it's the grandson Ian, my Johnnyboy, my daughter Jenn with sister Corinne in back of her, Liz and her friends Bethany and Megan, and Norm, Jenn's boyfriend. Corinne's boyfriend Mike was off-camera somewhere.

I, of course, had the camera in my hand.

Next week, my rare and handy friends Joe, Kathy, Lisa, and Carol come to my house for a knitting pool party. Let's see what kind of interesting pictures I get from that day.

I will accept payoffs ahead of time.