Best Quote I Heard All Day

I wish there were pig-men. You get a few of those pig-men walking around, suddenly I'm looking a lot better. That way if someone wanted to fix me up they could say, 'Hey, at least he's no pig-man.’ --George Costanza

How's this for a new boyfriend? At least he's no pig-man.

Mmmm. That come-hither look.

I always had a thing for redheads. With facial hair. Oh well, he's taken. But then, so am I.

Garden State Sheep Festival

I headed southwest yesterday to the land of Pennsyltucky to meet up with Joe, with my ulterior motive being to cadge some of Thaddeus's fine espresso. And so that we could wander around this show, perhaps to buy. And so we did. It's becoming a very nice little show, doubled in the number of vendors since I last went two years ago.

Very pretty baskets. Oh yeah, and the pretty boy, too. It was damned chilly and windy--he must have gotten goosepimples on those sexy legs of his.

This is actually the second building of vendors, along with some animals. The first building was filled. The vendors are primarily local, from New Jersey and PA, with a lot of nice wares.

These women were examining a fleece. It was gorgeous, Jacob, I believe. I was so tempted. But then, I don't have enough time to fuck around with washing and carding a fleece. So I passed. However, I did meet up with some of Dolores's near and dear ones.

I immediately suspected that this was Dolores's cousin Arabella; from a distance, the family resemblance was striking, I thought. However, it was some snooty bitch from Bucks County. Fuck ewe.

The original Sam the Ram was resting, in between signings of his new book, Stuff About Me.

This local lady had one of the most elegant proboscises I've ever seen on a sheep. Long, aristocratic--clearly a ewe of good breeding.

I bought some Jacob to play with and two cones of lovely heathered purple wool--all reasonably priced.

All in all, a lovely day. I met up with BJ, one of my readers, who lives in my neck of the woods. Always great to meet you guys, ya know. So sorry Carol couldn't make it. She was stuck at home so we missed her muchly.

And, I did not sing "The Lumberjack Song" to Joe. I value our friendship.

Back to the Future
Well, 39 years ago, it was going to be my future, I thought. Wilson College, in Chambersburg, PA. A women's college, ranked 13th at that time. Six-hundred girls, most of them always clad in their gym suits. Not quite Seven Sisters but pretty respectable.

And my mother's choice, not mine. I wanted to go to NYU. That was forbidden, due to the kind of trouble I supposedly would get into in NYC. Remember, this was 1968. So she packed me off to this godforsaken college, her hippie daughter, to keep her out of trouble.

Well, that didn't happen. I got into plenty of trouble. At the end of my 2-semester stay, I was pregnant, flunking out, and they were happy to show me the door. Even though I managed to be stoned most of the time, I was not exactly euphoric. In fact, this was the onset of my manic-depression. I can date it to September 1968, when I put my bags and trunk into my dorm room and realized that this was about the end of the line in my 18-year-old life. It sucked.

Jimmy, bless him, came down to school every weekend that he was off duty, driving from the Sub Base in Groton, where he was stationed in the Navy, all the way down to Chambersburg. So last week, when I missed my exit for I81, I had to take a local state highway to pick it up again--in Chambersburg. I had not been there since the day I left in the spring of 1969.

I had to take a picture of the tree where I told Jimmy I was pregnant and he said, "Well, I guess we should get married." Boy, was I ever lucky with him. It was a cold January Saturday night, he had parked his white '65 Barracuda right by that tree, and we got out and walked over to it. I don't know why we did that. But that's where my future was sealed.

The place hasn't changed physically in all those years. It's exactly as I remembered it. I drove around campus for about 10 minutes and then, as I did 38 years ago, I left as fast as I came.

Copyright and Making Shit for Friends

Well, interesting comments from you all. Now I'll tell you how I handled it. First of all, let me say that the person in question is no longer my friend and I have not seen her in a number of years. That was my choice. She's a miserable, sorry soul, most certainly an alcoholic, and one of the most self-centered, critical people I have ever met. We had been friends for a very long time but she changed dramatically over the years.

I refused to make the garment. Not because of the copyright issue because at that time, I wasn't quite as aware as I am now about that. I refused because I knew that I could make money by doing some finishing work, without having to deal with her. Besides, as many of you noted, she was quite imperious about it. She had never understood my knitting, and frequently made fun of it, in fact. So no way was I going to knit her something, whether she paid or not. I did offer to teach her to knit, though. And got a snide comment in return.

I will knit for friends and family but on my terms. And for free. They know that when I knit something for them, it's special. Rare and handy, if you will.