The good, bad, and ugly, February 2009

I'm getting settled back in, but still not sleeping right because of jetlag.  Stories will follow, don't worry.

I have a few goods to talk about this morning:  Heart, the lucky Japanese ox.  Heart is really cute, and he is indeed very lucky to be born in the Year of the Ox.  And he will never be yakitori, either.

Stella McCartney for LeSportsac bags caught my eye last year, but I choked on the prices.  The Fall 2008 styles and colors are now half off at LeSportsac, and that makes them pricey, but not insanely so.  

I've spend the past month doing swatches for a well-known designer's upcoming book.  I probably won't do that again.  Multiple swatches just aren't that much fun.  I knit enough that I could have made an entire sweater instead.   And they were solid colored yarns, so you know I was crying from boredom.  I am claiming 800 yards (8 12x12 swatches) on my yardage counts for 2009.

My little brother has Thailand photos, and I am trying to get him to send me some!  In the mean time, I sat on a beach that looked like this, knitting up yarn that matched the sky.  I also lost half of an Options pair.  It's probably bobbing back to China by now.

I followed the budget clamorings this week.  I am distressed that there seems to be a lot of spending that might not stimulate the economy, which might not work (and that seems to be ok), and that my DGD has to pay for it.  I feel like we sent our kids to the grocery with $1,000.00 and no grocery list.  They can spend it all, but we might not have anything for dinner next Friday night.

A medical system tagged along hidden in those 700 pages, and now we will be treated by trend.  I did that already in the Air Force....3 months of physical therapy to help my leg pain, and I must have been a terrible patient, because I did the exercises with no relief.  As it turns out, I had a tumor on my sciatic nerve.  No amount of physical therapy would have fixed it.  

Lastly, Casey shut down one of the conservative message boards on Ravelry.  This really shocked me, because I learned amazing swears on Ravelry.  Every story has two sides, I know, I know;  I learned terms like "Twat-waffle" on Ravelry from the LSG.  LSG puzzles me because they talk to each other like pimps beating their whores, and they find it pretty funny.  I can't figure that one out, because I know that in their heart of hearts, men talk about us like that anyhow....and we earn .85 to a guy's dollar.  The joke must be on me, I guess, stupid woman that I am, because LSG lives on, but the political conservatives were silenced.

Sigh.

ETA:  Someone came by and told me that "before you bash Ravelry, you should be clear about why the group was closed...not because of the views, but because the mods couldn't follow the rules."

HMMM-I am pretty sure that my post reflected confusion and disappointment, but I didn't feel I was bashing Rav.  Still don't.  And I sign my work.