A fire truck full of cute fire fighters threw candy at me.
Yes, it was a parade.
And yes, they were giving candy to everyone.
And yes, this parade was so small that they could have stopped and handed it to me instead of throwing it so that it scattered all over the road and under the car.
And yes, although I managed to get a picture of a giant foam Statue of Liberty on my mom’s cellphone…
no cute firemen pictures.
Arrived hotel: 1:00 in the morning
Thank God for caffeine and Roll-Aids to wash away the sin of my dissolute life-style
Seen Scribbled In All Different Handwriting On The Inside Of A Women’s Bathroom Stall
“I love Gary.”
“Me, too!”
“I do, too.”
“So do I!”
“We all do!”
“Gary is gay.”
Or $91 dollar Wollmeise, to be precise.
Well, that’s what we call demand, children, although I certainly wouldn’t have paid $91 for that particular color myself. There’s an interesting dilemma in this, because Claudia, the woman who dyes the Wollmeise sock yarn, has specifically asked that people do not charge more for the yarn than they paid for it. (Here’s a link to her shop)
Now, in this case, I can see that this person didn’t have control over how much it sold for—after all, it is an auction and Ebay auctions can get crazy. But apparently, some people made a habit of buying Wollmeise and turning around and reselling it for much more on Ebay. Claudia has apparently said that she won’t sell to people that do that.
Here’s my opinion: she needs to raise her prices.
Seriously. There is a huge demand for this yarn. The yardage is great (over 500 yards, I believe) and maybe it would slow down the frenzy. Otherwise, I am unsure of why it is so offensive to have your yarn resold on Ebay. Honestly. I mean, I would have thought that it would be flattering to have people who are willing to pay more than retail for your yarn.
I guess that this is part of a personal shtick with this mentality that I’ve seen that it is mean to make money when you destash yarn or trade or swap. That somehow, this evil knitter is rubbing their skinny villain hands as they bilk fellow knitters out of an extra $5 for a discontinued Socks that Rock color.
Let’s put it this way: if someone willing buys something without someone else holding a gun to their head—then I don’t care if you pay $200 for a skein of Caron Simply Soft. Yarn is not a life-giving essential. You do not need yarn to live. (Ow, I felt a twinge just writing that!)
Raising the prices, at least by a buck or two (or I should say, euro, since Wollmeise is a German-based company) could maybe help stem some of the demand, thus automatically lessening the chance of $90 skeins of Wollmeise.
Whaddya think? You can comment here and check out the original thread at Ravelry about the uber-expensive Wollmeise)
Fact One: My camera cord has disappeared.
Fact Two: I have a brand-new finished object to show you, but without the camera cord, all pictures are trapped inside the magic box. (If you really want some eye candy right now, check out Jen’s yarn porn, it is really good.)
Fact Three: I’ve been reading some fascinating books that I want to talk about, so I hope you’ll enjoy reading anyway until the little bugger turns up!
Let’s put it this way, my family is a book family. I can’t remember a time when we didn’t have shelves stuffed with books. A hard day of yard sales almost always resulted in another box. A good percent of our books are library discards; our local library/s hold biannual sales to raise money.
Courtesy of the latest raid, I’ve been reading Blossoms On The Olive Tree: Israeli And Palestinian Women Working For Peace.
It’s difficult to describe a book that feels like a great big box, stuffed full with tidbits of this and tiny treasures but I’ll try. The author talked to many women on both sides, all working to try to bring peace between two peoples caught in politics and war. Some were Holocaust survivors that fled to Israel. Others were hardcore politicians, working to bring a female voice to a typically male political scene—and on that score, dear readers, I fear that we fare little better!—but all of them are working towards the same thing: peace. Peace for their nations, peace for their families, for themselves.
I read stories about soldiers destroying belongings and homes—not for gain, but just because they could. One particularly gripping story told about a family in Bethlehem that had been commandeered by Israeli soldiers that broke down the back door and stayed there–for 21 days. (Apparently their house offered an excellent view from its roof during the stand-off in which a Palestinian gunman hid himself in the Church of the Nativity.) 2 family members died when they stormed their house, randomly firing guns through the door. The bodies weren’t picked up for two days; no one would come. The soldiers stole what they wanted, destroyed what they didn’t and finally left…
Just before I picked this book up, I’d also been reading Knitting for Peace: Make the World a Better Place One Stitch at a Time. As you can imagine, my adolescent heart is aflame with peace-making desire…and virtually helpless to do much about it. One fact in Knitting For Peace that caught my attention was that the Afghans for Afghans (I believe) recommended the color green, because it is a color beloved to Islam. This tiny humane detail has somehow stuck itself into my brain, niggling at me, as if it is somehow important.
So, yes, there are many charity knitting organizations. I’m organizing a knit-a-long for premature and needy babies in a Ravelry group and I’ll also be handling the other knit-a-longs that the group does, at least the next few, anyway. The next time, we will be knitting for rape survivors—shawls or blankets, something to show caring and respect.
But somehow, I feel restless, unsettled. I know there are people knitting helmet liners for soldiers. Socks for soldiers. Knitting For Peace shares amazing stories about many great organizations that knit for civilians as well. It’s not that I have not read these stories before, known about these organizations before, but I am seriously doubting whether I am doing all that I can…or that there aren’t quiet stretches of people, unreached, that still need help.
Naturally, I’m speaking from a privileged point of view. I don’t want to poke myself, to prod myself, to recognize that I am, in many ways, speaking down from my own self-created pedestal. I don’t want to be insufferable, somehow looking down like the great Western white saviour, reaching out my sainted hand to the great unwashed of the world that need my help. I have no illusions that my picture of need or conflict is faint and cloudy compared to what it is to live, day to day, in a life that is a war-zone, or simply a struggle to survive.
All that I can do is realize that I need to help…and that there is probably somewhere or something that I can. Please, if you have a charity or project that is especially close to your heart, share with me in the comments. Anything about your charity work or others would be appreciated. I’m asking, hoping for answers, because last time I asked for a response, about random acts of kindness, the response was touching and amazing. If you haven’t read everyone’s stories, please go here and read them, just scroll down to the comments—they’re beautiful, sometimes funny.)
Again, if you have a charity close to you, or a story that you want to share, please, tell me about it. I have two hands that want to work.
I woke up feeling quite disgusting this morning. I’ve been having something over the past couple of days and now it’s just come to a head, I guess. Sorry for the interuption in the regular posting schedule. I did a hood deal of practice spinning Tuesday and found out where Sleeping Beauty pricked her finger. Today, I’m sleeping.
First, I’ll put this in perspective. I’ve ordered from Knitpicks twice and both times I was very happy with their service. I bought some Telemark for a scarf and the second time, I bought two books at their summer booksale. Both arrived very quickly.
I’ve been recently browsing the website again and looking at some of their new sock yarns. Once again I had problems logging in to my account. I have always had problems with this on Knitpicks. It is on my list of allowed websites. My cookies have been emptied, etc. Frustrated by multiple problems, I registered a new account under a different email address. It didn’t make a difference. Every time that I tried to check out, it asked me to log in again.
So, I did not place an order. I never had the chance to even enter my card information.
Backing up for a moment—I did ask for a password reminder for my old account, the one that I originally used to place those orders last year. I received the strangest password reminder email that I have ever gotten in my entire life. Not only did I get my original password, I got every other password that I had typed there, both for my new account and for my old account when I was trying to remember what the old one was. Not only that, I received a password that wasn’t even mine or anything that I had tried to type in! I have never had any other website send me any password other than 1. My original password or, 2. A replacement password.
Back to the present. So far, I have ordered nothing and had problems logging onto their website. End of story, right?
Not so.
Yesterday, I received a confirmation email, saying that my Knitpicks order had shipped! I scanned the list—and quickly realized that this was not some accidental order of mine. It was $54 dollars worth of yarn in colors that I would never chose—key lime, acovado, and others—and a book. I was extremely surprised and disturbed and picked up the phone to call Knitpicks.
Yes, my order had shipped to Barbara P. Yes, my address was —– and the order was being shipped to my address. I gaped.
”Um, this is very weird, because I haven’t ordered anything from here recently.”
”Maybe your husband?”
”No, I’ve been considering an order lately, but none of these items are anything like what I was thinking of ordering.”
”Well, it was paid with Big Box Credit Card 1.”
At this point, I breathed a sigh of relief. Even if I had, under the influence of some strange yarn coma, ordered from Knitpicks, this confirmed that I didn’t. We don’t have Big Box Credit 1, we have Big Box Card 2*.
However, the fact remains that a box with $54 dollars worth of merchandise paid for by another person is being shipped to my address and unless they contact Knitpicks, I am in the Knitpicks database as the person who ordered it! I assured the very kind person on the phone that I will simply send the package back as soon as it arrives here. Hopefully, it will not take too long for it to reach that persob!
In the meantime, I can log onto my old account (but not order, blast!) and I can check the status of “my” order! I realize that this is probably a rare occurence, but it is a little disturbing nonetheless. The woman on the phone indicated that the person placing the order might have mixed up their numbers somehow, and I assume that this would account for this strange incident.
In any case, I sincerely hope that Knitpicks will overhaul its shopping cart soon, because they are too big (and too good) of a knitting website to have to deal with anything less than the best and one that lets its customers place orders!
*For the curious, yes, I am a teenager. Any purchases online are made and approved by my parents! They do not understand yarny cravings but they make exception for their obsessed daughter!
I have pictures. I have knitting that I’ve knitted. But I’m experiencing some technical troubles with the camera plus the computer. I apologize for the delay in updates. The blog should be running smoothly by tomorrow!
If Tim Russert hadn’t died this week, I probably wouldn’t be writing the obligatory Father’s day blog post. This is a knitting blog and my dad, well…I’m sure that if I knitted something for him, he would wear it. He’s the type of person that would wear and rewear the same knitted hat or scarf for years and years. But my dad will never knit. He will never crochet. Rosy Greer notwithstanding, he will never embroider, either.
But this week, Tim Russert did die. It was plastered all over the internet, trumpeted on the radio. Died at 58 years old. Born and raised in Buffalo, New York, devout Catholic, working class family, loved the Buffalo Bills, good father, good man, died at 58. After the radio host repeated the same ancedote about Tim for the fourth or fifth time, Dad switched off the radio.
We said, “It’s too bad, he was a good person,” the kind of stuff that you say about someone that you never even met, but cosmic guilt forces you to apologize, somehow make up for an early death. But…it’s a little different, this death.
My father, my non-knitting father, was born in Buffalo, New York. (I was also, but that’s another story) He is 57 years old, the only Protestant shoot from a Catholic family. Every time the Buffalo Bills have a game, our family still groans when they lose again, even though we’ve lived in WV for years now, and even though we know that they’ll lose anyway. He and Tim attended different schools in the same town. Maybe they crossed paths as kids, though Dad never knew him personally.
And then this week, Tim died. A year older than my father. A year older.
Tonight, he pulled some salmon from the fridge, the frozen fillet kind, not some fancy, whole organic fish that swam in blessed waters. Dad doesn’t knit, but he cooks; he cooks better than my mother does, especially breakfast. I stood at the sink, rinsing a couple of dishes, letting the heavy cast iron skillet drip-dry. He tossed the fillets into the microwave and set the skillet on the stove top, turning it up. I grabbed a towel.
”It’ll dry off,” he said.
I dried up the water anyway.
He tossed a fat pat of margarine into the skillet and I continued to rinse dishes as the margarine melted into itself. I paused, the smell of faint burning in the air. The margarine was all melted, the thin golden pool beginning to scorch as my dad started to defrost the frozen fillets.
”It’s burning,” I said intelligently and then when he didn’t move, I grabbed the handle and moved the pan off the burner, turning the heat lower.
”Maybe I wanted it burned,” he grumbled, starting to shake pepper and salt into it.
”Well,” I said sagely, “You can always burn unburned butter, but you can’t unburn burned butter. Or, as Yoda would say, ‘Unburn butter, you cannot!’.”
”Has it ever occured to you,” he said, still continuing in his ‘I’m not really irritated but I’ll pretend to be,’ voice, “That I could do this myself?”
I finished the dishes. A sudden thought suddenly came into my mind and I half-smiled at the reversal of our roles. As a kid, my favorite saying was, “I do it self.”
”Barbara, get down from the back of that couch!”
”I do it self!”
Sometimes, this phrase was repeated in tones that escalated as I foresaw an adult trying to come to my aid—”No, no, I do it self, I DO IT SELF!”
Like father, like daughter, I thought. Dad took the fillets and tossed them into the slightly scorched margarine, the pepper, the salt and a touch of garlic. I smiled, and put down my towel. I decided that Dad could definitely do it self. After all, he’s a much better cook.
I hope that he does it self for a long, long time.
RIP, Tim Russert.
The new summer issue of Knitty just went live!
One of my favorite things to when new issues are published is predicting what patterns will be hot. I’ve picked out 3 patterns in paticular that I like and that should be sending knitters everywhere scattering to their yarn stores.
My Top 3 Picks and Predictions for Hawt Popularity This Summer!
What are you waiting for? Get you to a yarn store!
