God Bless Us, Every One

I'm giving thanks today for my many blessings, among which I count you, Gentle Readers.  Thank you for your inspiration, encouragement, straightforwardness, loyalty, and patience.  Few knitters have the honor of friends like you, and I hope you know what your readership means to me.

Other blessings I am counting today include, but shall not be limited to the following:

Charts:    Can you imagine what would happen to me if all my patterns had to be written like this: "Row 1; work 3 red, 4 black, 7 red, 2 black..."?  That way lay certain madness.  To the inventer of graph paper, my Undying Gratitude.

Steeks:    Without which, I would have substantially less fun, and no one-woman crusade to spread the message to knitters. 

Yarn:        Just have to say it out loud - can't get enough of the stuff.  To the people engaged in growing it, spinning it, dyeing it and selling it, Many Thanks Indeed.

Needles:    Pointy, blunt, wooden, steel, circular, not, we love them all.  The clever souls who (continue to) invent better mousetraps for us deserve our deep and abiding thankfulness.

Stitch Markers:    Even though I make my own (lightbulb! I should make a tutorial for that!), I feel obliged to thank the intrepid knitter who devised the method of their use.  For this help, O knitter of old, whomever you are, Thank You Thank You Thank You.

Blue Painters Tape:    Okay, this might not be the first thing you think of in the realm of knitting stuff you love, but for me, it's a crucial chart-following implement.  Doesn't stick to paper charts.  Lasts longer than a sticky-note.  Costs little.  Also good for painting things, or so I'm lead to understand.

Sheep:    Because I Really. Love. Wool.

Knitting Books:    Where would the great chefs of our time be without recipes to inspire them?  Where would we knitters be without Elizabeth, and Clara, and Stephanie?  Knitting is a world in which there is room for everyone's idea. 

The Person Who Taught Us To Knit:    Thank you, Mom.  Even if you were only trying to find some way to occupy me and gain a moment's peace, Thank you.  Sitting close to someone you care about as they haltingly cause the string to loop around the sticks is a gift given to a blessed few.  My fondest wish for you, Gentle Readers, is that you will love someone enough to teach them to knit. 

Best wishes to you all for Peace, Love, and Yarn.
 

Snapshot of a Thursday

It occurs to me that in days hence, I may not remember accurately what this week was like.  And then I recall that blogs are excellent records for how things were, as well as how things are.  So in the name of posterity, I would like to note how yesterday went, just in case my formidable powers of denial take over sometime in the future.  I have the sense that my activity level is at some sort of benchmark, so on the off chance that I ever need to compare something to it, Here's Yesterday:

5:00 AM    Wake to the dulcet tones of morning talk radio, set to "STUN".  Close eyes again and try to remember what day this is, what I'm supposed to do next, and what I'm supposed to wear in order to do it.

5:30 AM    Achieve dim awareness that it's a weekday and the day job beckons.  Locate and consolidate various items which must be worked upon in stealth mode at day job:  Knitting du Jour (including charts, notes and appropriate needles - good luck with that) and design notebook.  Assure that tote bag reaches maximum weight limit by including cell phone, car keys, diet soda and frozen space-age polymer lunch.  Stagger toward car through freezing rain for exhilarating 20-mile commute to office.

6:00 AM    Play Well With Others, in spite of fact that coffee intake will not enhance coping skills for at least an hour.  Advise brilliant physician who cannot tie shoes (why do I judge everybody by their ability to manipulate string?) that his voice mail is not an actual cardboard box stored in a closet somewhere.  Dude was voted Most Likely To Cure Cancer, but can't manage an outgoing voice mail greeting.

11:00 AM    Break for 1/2-hour unpaid lunch, during which I plan to post to the blog, write and lay out an entire knitting pattern, as well as finish somebody's Christmas present knitting.  Totally doable.  As soon as I take up cocaine.  Consume microwaved frozen polymer lunch.  If the FDA says it's chicken, then chicken it is.

11:30 AM    Return below decks to row with other slaves.  Enumerate ways in which my cubicle compares unfavorably to jail cell.  Wonder if 19 years of keyboarding will paralyze my wrists on the exact day I finally "get time to knit".

2:30 PM    Retreat from cube-farm and drive 20 miles home, in 3/8" intervals allowed by traffic.  Remember each of the days last summer when I didn't ride my motorcycle to work and regret every single one, as the rain rolls down my windshield.  Stop at store for vital glue stick which stands between me and the evening's pattern production.  Get distracted by shiny objects in variety store and wonder why yarn is not sold there, but crochet hooks are.

4:00 PM    Greet small children and dog who are happy to see me, even though I have a slightly wild look about me.  Begin pattern package assembly in hopes of order fulfillment tomorrow.  Wish fervently that it were time for beer.

5:00 PM    Coach 8-year old through heating frozen pizza for family dinner, while continuing to stuff pattern envelopes.  Feel guilty that we are eating frozen pizza.  Feel bad for guilt over frozen pizza when there are people in my very own town who don't even have that for dinner.  Resolve not to expend any further energy on negativity.  Feel crappy for making the 8-year-old do dinner.

6:00 PM    Greet spouse, who is happy about frozen pizza, in that it A: tastes good, and B; requires little in the way of cleanup.  Resolve to emulate his optimism.  Run out of photo corners crucial to completion of pattern packaging and have small nervous breakdown.  Praise spouse for offering to get more photo corners, even if it's just because he wants to get away.

6:30 PM    Eat frozen pizza and give thanks for being full.  Phillip takes Campbell to Cub Scout meeting, while I take Lindsay to ice skating practice.  Locate and procure Christmas presents for 2 Grandmas while at the mall where the ice rink is.  Give thanks that my children have Grandmas to get presents for.  Watch Lindsay skate and wonder how she does that.  Look up to notice that someone is watching me knit, and wondering how I do that.

9:30 PM    Arrive home and shoo daughter off to bed.  Locate spouse, who is doing Grad School homework now that son is in bed, and thank him for procurement of photo corners after cub scouts.  Realize that it could very well be time for beer, except that I might not get the patterns finished once I have one. 

10:30 PM    Finish pattern package assembly and remind myself for the four millionth time that I have to remember to bring the samples with me when I drop off the patterns tomorrow.  Actually locate the samples and put them with the finished patterns.  Congratulate myself for uncharacteristic forethought.  Walk dog, who has to pee, but lacks enthusiasm due to cold weather.  Reward dog with treat and self with beer.

11:30 PM    Collapse into bed next to vaguely familiar spouse-shaped blob.  Realize that today's blog post never happened.  Promise myself to get more done tomorrow.  Realize that there are only 5 1/2 hours until tomorrow starts, and try to sleep faster.  Wonder if this is what is meant by the expression "fast asleep".

Distribution

Time and time again I have been asked why I didn't choose to self-publish my book.  It's true that I may have realized a higher per-volume profit, had I done so.  But I also would have had to assume all the responsibility for so many aspects of publishing (about which I know nothing) that I might never have seen a finished product.  And even if I had achieved all that on my own, I would still have been faced with the extremely daunting work of distribution.  Distribution would be the actual getting of books into the hands of would-be readers, a process both convoluted and byzantine.  Not to mention heavy.  Books really weigh a lot, as evidenced by the wee parcels I received yesterday:
 

That would be 8, count em, eight boxes of books. 

Friends of the blog, Knit Picks are hosting a swell book party here in Portland on 11-11, for which we agreed it would be easier if I just bring along the books.  And here they are.  there are 160 of them in this pile.  And now that they are here, all I can think is WOW, there were actually 20,000 copies in the first printing, and I am so happy that I don't have to schlep them all around with me, or try to get them to the book stores, yarn stores and warehouses where they need to be.  This is but one of many, many times that I am so grateful to my publisher for all that they do.  Not only are they really good at it, they work their magic without my ever knowing it.  The shiny beautiful books just arrive on cue at the right place, without slightest skill or bother on my part.  This meditation on the nature of all things Schleppy has brought me to the following conclusion:

More things should work like this.  For example, there should be a Global Laundry Distribution Conglomerate.  This GLDC would procure dirty clothes from their points of origin (bathroom floor) using GPS locators.  Then white-gloved delivery personnel would return them, clean and ironed, to the appropriate wardrobe-containment unit.  Imagine the well-oiled beauty of the GLDC's sock management administration:  Satellites could triangulate the position of any missing single sock for instant Hosiery Reunification, which process could be tracked via internet any time of the day or night.  We have the technology; why can't it be used for good instead of evil?

Or how about Coffee Service On Demand? CSOD would, by subscription, result in the libation of choice delivered to your armchair, bedside or car window.  Facial recognition software could transmit your beverage preferences to the nearest CSOD agent for immediate fulfillment.  How hard could that be?  Honestly, we can put astronauts into space; but try scoring a half-caff lowfat latte at the wrong time of day.

And while we're at it, why doesn't my refrigerator do the grocery shopping for me?  The weight sensor in my frige shelf should know when I'm running low on milk and transmit that data to my grocery, who would then know what to bring on its weekly delivery run.  Nothing difficult there; no wheels being reinvented. 

I think our society should start applying our vast command of technology and human know-how to some common sense endeavors.  If our global leaders are looking for any guidance on how to harness the power of all we have wrought, they need look no further than their children's' kindergarten teacher, or the guy at the deli, or the lady at the local yarn store.  We all know what needs inventing, what we want to take responsibility for, and what we could really do without. 

I'd love to go on about this, but I have to go find somebody's sock.