Hats, Socks, Politics & Facebook...

Well, there's probably a connection there. We'll see how this goes...

Knitting...

The baby layette - at least my version of a layette - is moving right along. I needed a set of size 5 circulars in the 12" length, and of course I can't find the (3 or 4) pair(s) that I have right now. So Hubby, ever the smart man, says, "You should hit the knitting store if Michael's doesn't have what you want."

Now you see why I married him, right? 

We went to Michael's. Before that, we had (gasp!) a date-ish night. And then we went to get balloons. 

Yes, this all ties in together, just stick with me. 

So Michael's? The knitting department at our local store has gone wayyyyyyyyyy down the flusher. They used to have several aisles. Now they moved it across the store, it's 2 aisles and a part of a wall. 

I found 2 sets of DPNs; one bamboo and one aluminum. I got both. (NOTE TO SELF: When you're in a notions department, pick up tape measures. Whether you need them right that moment, pick up tape measures...Trust us on this.)

There were only 16" sets of circulars. Oh well. It never occurred to me to hit the JoAnn Fabrics right across the street. 

Such is life. Ironically, to pick up the balloons, we had to cross the street anyway. I keep forgetting that JoAnn's is there. 

All of this is for BABY. Mamma came back to teach yoga this morning, and I got her some "Welcome Back" balloons. 

I'm zipping right along on the hat. I think this may be my "favorite hat pattern" if it works out well. I think the rolled brim will be adorable. 

As for the socks, I'm finishing up the Opal Watermelon socks. Remember - the ones I thought I'd lost? 

Lately, my friend Roberta has been posting bird pictures on Facebook. And today, she said, "Wow, every one of these makes me think of how the colors would look in socks! It's like a sickness, isn't it?"

Well, yes it is. 

After I finish the Watermelon socks, I will likely pick up another UFO and see if I can make some headway. I'm kind of done with baby knitting for now, though something is nudging me to whip up another baby sweater. 

As it is, though, I can always do a hat easily. I'm thinking it'll take me longer than the weekend, but hopefully within the week. 

Facebook...

...has become a war zone. I'm serious. I'm posting goofy pictures of my dog, knitting pictures, funny memes.

What I'm avoiding for the most part are the political posts. Too many of my "friends" have gotten really vicious about Hillary. 

One more time: I am not a Hillary fan. But I will not vote Republican, as long as I have ovaries and a uterus. 

I'm frankly stunned at the whole BernieBot phenomena, but I'm somehow not surprised, given the vitriol and anger in the discussion, and the decay of rational dialog in general in society. 

Speaking of goofball pictures of my dog, this is Quinn, who is absolutely embodying the "dignified and elegant" Norwegian Elkhound persona right now. She's sacked out on the couch. 

At least this time, she's left room for any human who wants to go sit with her. 

Milestone...

So my friend G wanted to meet me for a walk. We've touched base on FB, on emails and the like, but we really needed to talk. She's my "owner-mentor" as I work through the fun(?) of owning a studio. 

We decided that today was a great day, which it was. My Jawbone UP had a moment!!

As we walked and talked, I wasn't paying too much attention. We had a grand time. It buzzed when we got close to the end of our loops around the trail. 

When I came home, I checked the phone. Over 11,000 steps! In two hours!! Yipee!

The good news (aside from the fact that I actually MADE it) was that the shoes I wore are going to work out fine for my trip to Oxford, MS. The other news is that I need to make sure I have lighter socks. I'll pick up a second pair of shoes so that I can alternate them. 

Trip...

The trip to Oxford will likely be the last one that Kid #2 and I take for a while. First off, I'll need to visit Kid #1 (more later). Second, Kid #2 will be starting a Master's Degree program and will probably take most of the classes during the summers. 

We're going by way of Cairo, IL so we can get the Mark Twain Connection. You have to travel with an English teacher to get that...

The news about Kid #1 isn't great, but it's ok. 

Over Easter, The Fiancee gave back the ring. We're very sad. They've been together for about 6 years. But of course, the flip side is, if The Fiancee "isn't happy" then I'm glad that was decided BEFORE they married. 

Kid #1 is doing ok. Relocated to Virginia, which is where he'd planned to go for years, but The Fiancee didn't want to leave. I get it. I always wanted to leave, and I left. My siblings didn't leave; though I think mostly they wanted to. 

And now, they won't or can't leave. I wouldn't have trouble starting over somewhere new, and Kid #1 is learning that now. I'm glad. Sad, because it's not exactly a day-trip. But glad that this is what he chose. 

He's found work; he has a plan. Life goes on. Once he's settled, we'll figure out how to get Larry (his cat) out to him. But that's a while yet. 

Garden 2016...

Veggies 2016 are in. Today, we went to Eastside Greenhouse to pick up some tomatoes and herbs. Hubby decided to plant all 4 tomato plants, even though in 2 months, he'll be complaining. 

We got a 4-pack of kale, so we'll see how that goes. He'll eat kale (which I just cooked tonight with leeks and garlic) so I'm hopeful that if it's a bumper crop, it won't go to waste. If nothing else, I'll be a smoothie-bot!

Also got basil, lemon basil, Rosemary and Thyme. No parsley, no sage, for you Simon & Garfunkel fans! We have parsley in the freezer from last year, thanks. 

We've also planted leeks, Brussels sprouts, radishes, lettuce and carrots. Oh, and a few cucumbers, too. 

The herbs will be planted next week. I'm a little worried about the huge herb trug; it was pretty infested with ants. I think what happened was that Hubby covered it - and the ants were nice and cozy through the winter. He's going to empty it all out and refill with clean dirt. Hopefully that will fix it. Also, we'll leave it open year-round. 


The Monster Bleeding Heart has come back for another year. It's a little over 30 years old now. 

And a VERY peeved hummingbird just buzzed Hubby. We saw it while we were eating dinner, so we rushed to make a home-made syrup, which is cooling. He grabbed a feeder off the porch to scrub and the bird, in a fit of pique, buzzed him, as if to say, "Hey, dude!! I'm HERE... Where in the &*^%% is my food???" 

Should be another 10 minutes and we can put food out for him. 

Random Picture...

This is the Monster Bleeding Heart. It's on the northwest corner of the porch. I planted one plant. Over 30 years ago. And it keeps coming back, larger and more beautiful each year. 

This year, the dill came back (surprise, surprise); so did the lavender (it never really died), the Icelandic poppy (rivaling the Monster Bleeding Heart for persistence), one bee balm, one butterfly bush, and the carnations. 

I still have to plant wildflowers. Columbine are back, looks like foxglove may be back, and some oddball wildflowers I planted last year (brown-eyed Susan, and a few others that I swore I marked...). 


It's amazing this thing has lived this long, because the sorry stuff that passes for "dirt" in that spot is impossible. I've got lily of the valley in the north, right behind it on the left side of the porch, which you can barely see. But that stuff will grow anywhere. 

Apparently, so will Bleeding Heart. 

Sadness, Overload & Paranoia

It's starting again. The 24/7 news-punditry-overload.

And that's compounded with the overuse of the words "terrorism," "tragedy," and all those other "let's be afraid" buzzwords.

And President Obama is either "over-reacting" or "not reacting fast enough" even though he's just held a news conference wherein he asked us all to "not speculate ahead of the facts." For which the extreme right will excoriate him, calling him a "closet Muslim who sympathizes with terrorists."

Look. For all we know (and we don't know a whole lot) this may be an act of an international group. The experts are saying there was no chatter about that. But then again, I kind of like that they're not telling us everything. We aren't them. We aren't charged with finding out who did this, so unless you know something material to the investigation, you should not be spreading hate and discontent by going on Facebook or Twitter or wherever and blaming "them." Because right now, we don't know who "them" is. Or are. Whichever.

For all we know otherwise, it's a crackpot who's got a grudge. Or a home-grown crazy. Or someone who was recruited on this soil and took the message the wrong way.

Whatever the scenario, we are not entitled to know everything. And the fact that some in the bloggosphere, twittersphere and punditocracy were screaming about an hour after the fact, WHO DID THIS??????? -- really??? Are you serious? This isn't CSI or NCIS. You don't get a resolution 20 minutes after the dust has cleared (not counting commercial breaks).

We have for too long eked away at our ability to let things take their course. We are a society comprised of a pitiful faction who need to know EVERYTHING. And they must know it RIGHT NOW. Or there's a COVER-UP by the GOVERNMENT.

All of this fear-mongering is not only lessening our ability to let things move along as they should, but it's making us more and more paranoid. Part of our strength as a nation includes the ability to live our lives without overwhelming paranoia and fear. But some of the hacks on the airwaves insist that we must all be Henny Penny, crying at every moment that "the sky is falling."

Till one day, when it actually does fall, we're so weary of the constant level of fear and rising "terror levels" - that we miss the thing we're supposed to be paying attention to!

We need to be calm. We need to let the authorities do their job. We need to pray for those who are involved, whether you wish that to be a formal prayer, a wish for good karma, or whatever that means to you.

We need, in other words, to shut up and get out of the way.

I'm D-O-N-E!!!

Last night was The Night. We had our presentation and got our grades.

And I need to vent a little bit.

There were 3 groups presenting, and we were lucky (thank you, St. Thomas Aquinas, patron saint of students, and St. Bridgid of Ireland, the other one!) to be able to go first. As we were setting up, B, one of our group members, asked the prof how long we had, and the prof said, "Oh, about 40 minutes." Well...T in our group had asked that question the night of our "final" which was thinly disguised as a "mid-term" exam and we were told "about 1 hour." So that's what we planned. Since we had so few groups presenting, we figured, heck with it. We did our hour. That included a 20-minute video segment of W in our group, since W was absent due to a job interview -- and in this market, Lord knows you just go to the interview, and we make do with what we need to do to get our presentation off the ground.

Luckily, Hubby was able to videotape W and B was able to get that into the presentation. I'm tellin' ya - it was slick! It was funny, because we talked about what to wear, and it ended up we all did "office fancy" --- and T and I nearly wore the same top, which would've been funny, since we'd have looked like Tony Orlando and Dawn... But both of them, B and T, are too young to know who those people are. Ahhhhhhh, youth.

We did our presentation and it went well. There were no typos on our slides (of course), and the majority of our slides had a "hook" to them, if you were paying attention, that related to the subject being presented. We all looked at our audience and only briefly noted the slides on the screen behind us.

We were peer-graded, plus the instructor. The other two groups (here's where the rant comes in) did their presentations in less time than we did, though the second group did do about 45 minutes - they had one less person in their group, so that made sense.

But....(cover your ears, here's the rant - or at least Part A of the rant) they had typos on at least 50% of their slides. Both of the other groups. And several times, they read from the slides. With their bodies partially turned toward the screen.

OK, I'm picky. This is the last class in your MBA. You're an adult student. That presumes that at some time, somewhere, you've had to speak in public. It also presumes that somewhere along this track, you've had a communications class or two, and you've done small group work in other classes, and presented in front of at least a class-sized group. And you may have had to use a PowerPoint presentation. You need to spell-check them. Twice. At least. And please don't read to us. We can all read, I hope, by this time.

Part B of the rant: Today, I heard that one of the people in one of the other groups was "mad" at us, and put that complaint onto FaceBook because "we graded poorly."

Well, your presentation was poor, and if it was mine to do, there'd have been extra points taken off for "reading to the screen" and "typographical errors." Look, I know everyone's human and there are people who are petrified of public speaking, but by this time - again - you should either have had a chance to rehearse or you should be a little more adept at faking being able to do it well.

I talked to W in our group, and explained my objections. Met with agreement. It's not that I'm overly-exacting, though I am. It's that I expect a certain amount of professionalism at this level. We had a bloop in one of our video pieces; you just move on. Like when I flub a chord --- I've learned that people notice it less if you keep going. When you stop dead in your tracks, they kinda notice that the music isn't playing!

W says that it might be that the other groups "wanted to do the bare minimum." And if that's so, my grading of their presentations reflected that. If my work and the work of my team is "A" level, then I demean my efforts and those of team by giving a sub-par group an "A" grade.

Anyway, it's done. The book will be resubmitted (it's in proof stage right now) and will be ready for sale shortly. The instructor stopped dead at my desk and picked up our book, saying "Wow, this is gorgeous!" Yay!!!

So now, I can concentrate on some freelance gigs that I've got, I can knit and I have to find something else to do with my Tuesday nights. My mother says I'm "much more human" and not as cranky. She mentioned something about tossing raw meat to me during the class, but I told her today that like as not - I'd probably have whipped it back to her!!

Off to go see what the weather is doing. Supposed to be a winter storm watch, but so far, nothing but cold.