I Apologise In Advance

I don't know if I am being particularly bitchy today, but when I came across the following pattern note on Ravelry, I stopped in my tracks:

When I’m knitting a Jared Flood pattern, I feel like he’s making love to me. When I finish a Jared Flood pattern, I feel like I just gave birth to his child.

I feel this quote is almost worthy of a lolcat picture - you know the "U R DOING IT WRONG" type - because either I'm not knitting the right kind of patterns or the quoted knitter has not been involved in the right kind of love-making. Also, I know that seaming stuff is seen as a painful process but it is as painful as child birth? Really? And, finally, I just find the pattern note a touch on the creepy side of things.

But I do think I am in a bitchy mood today. I spent my lunch catching up with blogs and after a few reads I decided I had had enough of self-congratulatory, self-satisfied glimpses of homemade organic bread, tidy houses with expensive Scandinavian design furniture and delicate beige sweaters paraded on a series of identikit children who are all doing so incredibly well at school.

I think tonight I'll need to crash a lot of cars on the Xbox 360 whilst eating chocolate. And possibly knit a couple of more rows on David's sweater (I'm hoping stocking stitch will make me go completely zen).

I'll leave you with one of the greatest Halloween costumes I've seen for a long, long time.. and a slightly bitchy link: Regretsy.

And They Lived Happily Ever After

.. and they lived happily ever after - they being the knitter and her own Liesl. I frogged a scarf I knitted last year but only wore twice and miraculously I got an entire top out of my three re-purposed skeins of Noro Iro. Liesl is a magical pattern, I think.

Right now I'm really using knitting as means of escape from a very, very busy life. I cannot write about the things that are happening as I have vowed to keep certain aspects of my life separate from this blog, but I am currently facing a workload which is causing me to a) freak out slightly, b) stress and worry a lot and c) have brain-freezes. I wish I could pick up a book and escape, but my head is not in that sort of space at the moment.

So I knit. I knit a lot.

Earlier this year I was told to relax by watching trashy TV and reading crap books. I've finally taken those words on board and so I'm watching a lot more TV - whilst knitting, of course - than I usually do. This has lead me to conclude that FlashForward is very bad; that True Blood is very interesting; that Merlin is very silly, has pretty art direction and occasionally sports hidden depths; and that I have very little patience for reality TV (bar BBC's MasterChef which Other Half watches religiously).

In other news, the most despicable "newspaper" in the UK - the Daily Mail which does not deserve a link - has published a poisonous article on the death of boyband singer Stephen Gately of Boyzone (BBC link). I read the homophobic article itself earlier today before the Daily Mail found it necessary to edit it. In the words of the Guardian's Charlie Brooker (and his entire column is magnificent):

The funeral of Stephen Gately has not yet taken place. The man hasn't been buried yet. Nevertheless, Jan Moir of the Daily Mail has already managed to dance on his grave. For money.

It has been 20 minutes since I've read her now-notorious column, and I'm still struggling to absorb the sheer scope of its hateful idiocy. It's like gazing through a horrid little window into an awesome universe of pure blockheaded spite. Spiralling galaxies of ignorance roll majestically against a backdrop of what looks like dark prejudice, dotted hither and thither with winking stars of snide innuendo.

I hope Gately's husband and family sues the hell of Daily Mail. And I hope that other advertisers follow Marks & Spencer's example and withdraw their advertising money from the Mail. It is not the first time the Daily Mail angers me (in fact, you could set your clock by how often I feel personally insulted) but this is truly gobsmacking vicious.

Ah, a blog entry which is all over the place. And all I meant to say was that I really do love my new top and that I'm knitting a lot at the moment. The fact that this turned into a bit of a rant should give you a clue as to how stressed I am.

Pax.

You And Whose Army?

Yesterday I kicked someone off my Facebook friends list. I came home, checked FB quickly and noticed someone from my primary school days had joined a Danish-language group called "I'm not racist but be nice OR get out of my country". My stomach tensed as I checked the group description with its ten so-called commandments (including "Accept people can eat pork and not be disgusting" and "Pay your taxes - even if you own a cornershop or a takeaway"). The Danish flag featured heavily, of course.

So I sat there just before bedtime and I was .. not shocked nor surprised..  but, I guess, saddened that someone I once knew would think it a great idea to join such a group. And then I realised that I have no time whatsoever for this sort of sh*t, kicked my erstwhile classmate off my friends list and headed off to bed feeling slightly shell-shocked.

I feel I should be doing something more than just block someone on a silly social networking site (and reporting the group to the FB admins as violating their TOS. I do not think they'll care much), but what?