Best Quote I Heard All Day
I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.--Steve Martin

The blog is now up to 281 entries. One of these days I swear I'm going to take all the entries, shove them into one Word doc and count the words so that I can feel something akin to accomplishment. Or perhaps sadomasochism.

And then maybe ask myself why I feel it's necessary to write a book.

Huh? Wha?
I'm still noodling through the questions posed in yonder below Comments.

What's the most I ever won at poker? About ten bucks. I believe in giving rather than receiving.

Have I ever knitted anything naughty? No, but I have my ways with a darning egg.

And Yet Another Topic
Another Marilyn (great name, that) asked: My Mom gave me one of her pre-WII sock patterns. It's written simply(12 small paragraphs of instructions including 2 of darning advice)not 3 pages and more.I cherish it and use it. How do we push or encourage or whatever the knitting community to educate itself so patterns can be that simply and effectively written again? Too much wasteful and unecessary verbage in patterns for me. Would you comment, please?

In general, people do not think for themselves these days. It's done for them, and they expect nothing less from knitting patterns. You can't push the knitting community into thinking for themselves because this lack of self-reliance and thought is a national disease. Consider our current administration, which is a macrocosm that every day exponentially exudes incompetency and ineptitude. Knitting is merely a microcosm of society and it's filled with people who don't think for themselves, let alone use Google.

Here's my take as a writer: When I wrote test procedures, as-is configurations and other lovely technical documents for the U.S. Navy, I had to learn to write to a 9th grade reading level. That's not easy. If your writing is obscure and unclear, it will come back to bite you in the ass. This is particularly true of knitting directions. You must spell everything out with the presumption that the reader knows very little. And won't know unless you tell them.

My personal test when writing technical directions was to hand my work to someone I knew to be a total dolt on the subject. If that person could understand and follow my directions, I knew I was on track.

Verbiage is only wasteful if it says nothing. It would be lovely if every knitter were to the needles born. There are a lot of knitters out there who should find another hobby, like scrapbooking. Or perhaps bungee-jumping. Off a precipice.

Now that I've pissed my sister off with derogatory statements about scrapbooking, I will pretend to be contrite.

Nicknames and Thelma/Louise Trip
I was thinking the other day about family nicknames. Somewhere, in some e-mail I read, someone asking about what your family calls you. My sister calls me Sissyboo. My kids occasionally call me either Mamoo or Mommy Dearest. John calls me "Juicy" (from a quote in Reservoir Dogs). Most everyone else calls me Mar because it would seem that the three syllables in Marilyn are just too much to say. I sign everything except legal documents and checks as "Mar". Because three syllables are too much to write.

My daughter Corinne had the best nicknames as a small child: Grundoon the Groundhog Chile and Bumbawoo. I have no idea where Bumbawoo came from.

Anyway, Bumba, Liz and I are leaving tomorrow morning for Massachusetts for a weekend trip to Webs (Mamoo) and a trip to Yankee Candle (Bumba...and Mamoo). Just we three girlillas on the road. The guys are more than pleased to have the weekend to themselves for scratching, farting, playing computer games and going fishing.

So I'll take the camera, I suppose. I'll be looking for mill ends for weaving. The hotel has an indoor pool. That means a rare and handy swim in the evening. More on Monday.