A Little Yarn On The Side

I am crafting today: working on the flannel shirt, then maybe the pink sweater which is now all the way to the sleeves, and enjoying the sunshine, and not have to shovel today.  And I'm spending time with all you wonderful crafters who visit each other's blogs and say nice things and make lovely craft items.  This is a nice world. And then there's the not-so-nice one.  A friend of mine is running for DNC chair, and while anyone who steps up to run for office should be applauded because it's a lot of work and there's often no reward and no thanks, I was kind of trying to lay low and not have anything to do with it.  Kudos to her for running, but a DNC chair from Idaho would be like and RNC chair from Hawaii or whatever other state hasn't elected a statewide Republican in 20 years--maybe NOT your expert on building a successful organization.  However, when I logged on to social media this morning, I had a message that Breitbart had done a story attackin...

I had actually forgotten about Me Made Mondays, but later I'll be donning this  to go out and deal with this: Yes, it's snowing again.  And had I checked the weather forecast, I might not have done a second set of arm exercises at the gym last night, but sometimes you just don't want to know.  They stopped discussing record snowfall about 3 or 4 storms ago.  I wish people would stop calling each other "snowflakes" to imply fragility.  They've obviously ticked off Snow Miser, who is taking it out on the northwest.  There is NOTHING fragile about snowflakes when they unite.  More than 50 buildings in the town closest to where I grew up have collapsed under the weight of snow, including the grocery store.  And it's only January. I am crafting today.  I've made progress on the new flannel shirt, and am trying out some of the new embroidery designs, starting with towels followed by a new icicles design,  and hopefully b...

A lot of people have asked why I didn't march yesterday because I have been so politically active, and I've been a speaker at marches in the past.  When people asked if I was joining the local march, I said "sure," but when it came down to it, I just couldn't go.  Even I didn't understand why I didn't march until today. I didn't march yesterday because for years I have been trying to get people to be politically involved, and have heard over and over "I don't follow politics" or "I don't follow local politics." Trump didn't happen overnight or this year. He started with Newt Gingrich's Contract With America. He started with the No Child Lef t Behind Act. He started with Reagan repealing the Fairness Doctrine. He started with big money being poured into judicial races. He started with low voter turnout and voter apathy. He started with people preferring to follow celebrity news over actual journal...

And for the first time since our winter-from-hell began, it was snowman snow.  So, of course: but the ensemble was 100% courtesy of my husband, Andy.  Besides loving his sense of humor, he's a staunch supporter of human rights--not to mention those of snowpeople. 

We used to be a nation that expected a free press to question our leaders. We used to be a nation where presidential candidates of both parties released tax returns to assure the public they had no conflicts of interest. We used to be a nation where presidents put their financial affairs in a blind trust, or in Jimmy Carter's case, sold their peanut farm because Americans understood how dangerous financial conflicts for a president could be. We used to be a nation where marital infidelity and multiple wives would have been the end of a campaign, especially for the party of "family values." We used to be a nation where bragging about groping women was wrong. And as of today, we aren't.

So in the interest of wearing more of my me-mades, this year I decided that every Monday didn't have to be a different me-made item.  Last year I found myself wearing fewer hand-made items the rest of the week to try to "save" them for Mondays (which probably says sad things about my enthusiasm for doing laundry).  Yesterday I had a doctor's appointment, and since we have been housebound quite a bit this winter, I celebrated being out by wearing the blue microsuede ensemble AND a blue bowknot scarf that has apparently never gotten a "finished" picture.  It felt so festive! And I learned a very important lesson: If you are trapped in a waiting room for an hour with some "Discovery" Channel show about hillbillies making moonshine (and boasting about not knowing what they're doing), the actual exam is NOT the worst part of the annual "woman's wellness" exam.  Heavens.  I like my doctor, who is a very educated man who probably s...

We have managed to not lose power, but other parts of the state haven't been so lucky.  Now we've had 3 days of heavy rain here, which melted off much of our snow but has led to flooding, rock slides, and avalanches.  In one of the weirdest twists of fate, one of the nearby ski resorts is closing tomorrow because of TOO MUCH snow .  I've never seen that.  With everything going on with our crazy winter, I was a bit unenthusiastic about putting these up and my hip/back was even less so as I did something and threw it out, landing myself in bed for the last day and a half.  I'm better today, and I keep trying to remind myself that winter justifies knitting lots and lots of sweaters.  To emphasize this, for Me Made Monday I wore the first wearable sweater I ever knit: Sure, it was supposed to be in cotton and I made it in some bizarre acrylic that Red Heart no longer even makes, but compared to my earlier sweater attempts, that was only a mildly wrong...