Best Quote I Heard All Day

New Year's Day - Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.--Mark Twain

I don't do resolutions. And this past week, I paved my own road to hell with a good intention and got sandbagged by an asshole.

So you won't see any RAOKs (random acts of kindness, for those who don't know) or resolutions here. I'm not in the mood.

However, my friend Pat did send me this over the Christmas holidays and suggested I share it with you:

I think I saw this book on Amazon a while back.

Almost Good
Ma got Knitter's last week and I happened to see it while at her house. Not bad. With addition of Kaffe and Brandon designs, I felt it was worth buying. At least the puke factor has decreased for this issue. Perhaps DragonBoy was suffering from pinkeye or some other opthalmic disorder because the color choices were actually something that animals other than dogs could appreciate.

Having been a magazine editor, I know that the last issue of the year is the one where you've got to publish your U.S. Postal Service Statement of Ownership, Management & Circulation. This must be done by law, and if you look in the back of any magazine that has subscribers, you'll find it tucked away in the b/w ads. So every year, I check the Knitter's v. IK statements. IK's statement is on page 130 of the Winter issue, Knitter's is on page 113. These statements give you the breakdown of the magazine distribution--how many copies were sent to subscribers, how many were given away, that kind of thing.

In other words, you can get a pretty good idea of who sells more. Guess who the winner is? Of course. Interweave Knits. Every bit a far superior publication, hands down. And the proof is in their circ numbers.

I would suggest that while IK's ad revenues seem to have gone up, based on the number of ads, Knitter's has gone down. However, the X-men probably make a good deal of their dough on Stitches. I'm betting that attendance to Stitches East, the largest of the three, has gone down in the past few years. I sure know plenty of people on the East Coast who can't be bothered anymore. Rhinebeck and MD Sheep and Wool are becoming the venues of choice.

More Gravy Than Grave
Bah! Humbug. Since I have no husband to give me a Christmas present, I sometimes buy something for myself. This year I wasn't going to give myself anything but a week before Christmas I broke down and bought the KnitPicks Options interchangeable needle kit. With one caveat, I think this is an exceptional buy and definitely worth getting.

The needle points are sharp, the joins perfect, the cables are great. The needles do not come unscrewed from the cable. I've already knit a good chunk of the Arwen cardi left front with them and been quite pleased.

However, KnitPicks needs to make a 16" cable. Why they didn't is beyond me. If they want this to be a truly useful kit, they need to make this available. After all, you can buy a 60" cable separately, so why not a 16"? Pretty dumb.

The other thing I bought a couple of weeks ago was a skein of Black Bunny Fibers laceweight--Red Light.

As Carol says, Red Light as in "District." Uh huh. Goes up on my dedicated BBF shelf for future knitting but I will be working it sometime this year, in lace, probably a scarf.

I love Carol's stuff. After seeing all the hand-dyed yarns in NYC, I'd still rather buy hers. And she's just put up a ton of stuff, so get there now--it goes fast, I'm telling ya.

Thanks, Iron Sausage
To Johnny Hargreaves, my former boyfriend and always dear friend, for calling me on New Year's Eve to chat for a while. John knows this isn't always a great time of year for me and although we no longer live together, he's still very much my beloved, thoughtful friend. A good guy.

Some Boring New Year's Thoughts
So, gang, another year bit the dust. I think 2007 will be the year of the Wedding Ring Shawl for me, for one. And I will be concentrating on writing, per usual. And perhaps make a few more garments for myself. And maybe a possible new grandchild, who knows? I can see myself designing baby sweaters for the next branch of the KC family tree. I never really plan ahead as to what I'm going to knit, especially not at the beginning of the year. Vague projects dance through my brain but in the long run, it's what grabs me at a particular moment that gets made.

And I swear to God, I'm going to get some weaving done. Because that rare and handy expensive loom is sitting gathering dust. Not good.

Happy 2007 to you all. And thanks for reading.