Are We There Yet? Are We There Yet?

Best Quote I Heard All Day
Instant gratification takes too long--Carrie Fisher

I've got a list of my favorite bipolars and the former Princess Leia ranks high. Here are a few of my other favorite manics.

• Stephen Fry
• Ray Davies 
• Vivien Leigh
• Richard Dreyfuss
• Mark Twain
• Sting

Not to mention Abe Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Mozart, Vincent van Gogh, and a bunch of other writers, poets, musicians, and artists. Whenever I feel like shit, I think of these people and what they accomplished. And then there's Mel Gibson, who's a mess and a piss-poor poster boy for BP.

Gimme, Gimme, Gimme
As an "IT professional", I'm used to people wanting something immediately. This wretched disposition permeates our entire society, probably due to the rise of PCs and the internet. Sadly, it's invaded knitting to the point where I open a knitting catalog and practically every project is targeted towards beginners and those who HAVE to make something within two days.  Weekend projects are not my cup of arsenic.

My favorite quote comes from a former boss. "If you want it in the worst way, that's probably how you'll get it."

So true.

Books for the Patient
I just purchased "Knitted Lace Designs of Herbert Niebling" from Schoolhouse Press (bless them for publishing this and other wonderful, thoughtful books). If you want to challenge yourself, try one of his incredible lace designs.

This is definitely a lock-yourself-in-a-room knitting situation. I'm planning on doing one of these this fall. After which, I will design and wear a knitted straitjacket.

Garden State Sheep & Wool
For those of you who think the opening scenes of the Sopranos constitute the sum total of New Jersey, you're wrong. Jersey is still the Garden State, despite being the most densely populated of the 50.

GS S&W is a wonderful small show, with lots of local producers and a real rural ambience. I always go, to buy buttons from the button lady and something special. This year, I found some fabulous suri alpaca from WoodsEdge Wools, one of the largest alpaca farms in the country, located in Stockton, NJ.

And then there are the vintage buttons I bought. My favorites are these, circus motifs from the 1940s. They were a bit difficult to photograph.

Teabagger Knitter
Those of you who've been Tonstant Weaders know that I'm a liberal freethinker, and the hatred of these miserable simpletons who call themselves Teabaggers makes me pukified (I think Sarah Palin used that word recently).

I suspect that many KnitDweebs are Teabaggers. Simpletons whose brains are trapped in a vicious cycle of ignorance.

Teabagger knitting projects:

• Prayer shawl with the words "Obama is a Muslem" worked in Fair Isle
• Placard knitted in red, white, and blue acrylic, "Repeel Congress" the slogan
• Felted placard tote bag

 Feel free to add your own Teabagger knitting project to the comments. Let's have some fuckin' fun with this!

Thank God there are no Teabagger or Teaparty groups on Ravelry. At least, none that I could find. Presumably, Teabagger knitters aren't very techo-savvy.

That's it for today. I'm busy knitting two cardigans for Logan and Colin, grandsons of my friends Bob and Jean. I'll probably publish the design--it's a raglan cardigan knit in the round in toddler sizes. I'll be using the circus buttons for them. Actually yanked enough Harrisville Shetland from the stash in burgundy and blue.

Rare and handy to work from the stash. I need to do that more often or I'll be starring on "Hoarders."

Be the skankiest, my skanks.

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.