A Knitting Blog Including Everyday Thoughts and Observations of Daily Life Through The Eyes of A Late Forties Something Woman...At Least I Was In My Late 40's The Last Time I Checked
Easter is only a few days away. So I thought I'd post this little cartoon. It just screams Monday. I kinda like the Easter egg shell paint job he's doing here. I might would want it in my music studio. After a few glasses of some really good wine, singing in a room with the 'psychedelic' walls could be quite the far-out experience!
I think I would pass on yelling at my Mr. Peter Cotton Tail and just accept that Monday and all it's screwed up glory is OK once in awhile.
The Ravelry community chose to beat up on Mo Rocca because of an arbitrary comment he made about hand knit sweaters: "Home made sweaters are always itchy". Uh oh. It's time to duck and cover. In coming!!! Mo had better cover his itchy ass! And beat up on him the knitting community did - in the form of harsh comments on Ravelry...which made their way to Mo's eyes. Rebuttal was in order. The result was this story on CBS Sunday Morning.
I wish to post a disclaimer here: Mo says at one point during the story that a person should not "drink and knit". Drinking and knitting CAN and DO go together. Just ask Crazy Aunt Purl http://www.crazyauntpurl.com/ . I did a lot of drinking and knitting while going through my last divorce. It's not to say that the next day you won't discover grave mistakes in your knitting and subsequently have to frog the project because you have NO recollection of knitting any stitches at all the night/day before! But yes, they can co-exist.
So, I like Mo. I even liked him when he was doing the crazy comments on 'This is The 80's' etc...on VH1 years back, stupid as a lot of those comments were. But he was kinda cute in a raggedy old teddy bear that needs a little repair kinda way- even with the little hint of lisp he has; and I hate listening to people with a lisp. But that's another post for another time. I'm proud of him for "movin' on up" to CBS news. Can we look forward to Mo taking Katie's place on the CBS Evening News? Probably not. But one can dream......
I found this video on You Tube and thought it was just the coolest thing. It's an ad for Natural Gas. But it's concept is sheer genius. Watch for yourself and feel the warmth!
This would be me if there were such a thing as 'The All Knitting Channel'. Aaahhh Monday....
Saturday, March 20, 2010
I love spring. I'm so happy it's here....finally. I'm a spring baby. I was born on the first full day of spring, so tomorrow is my birthday. Yay spring! Yay birthday! Yay new beginnings. Yay new hope!
Here's to the "wearin' o the green", "may the luck o the Irish be with ye", "findin' yer pot o gold at the end o the rainbow", "carry ye four leaf clover fer luck", and "carryin' the spirit o the Irish with ye all the rest o ye days".
For most of us, Monday is a dreaded day. I don't know who made up the rule that Mondays are foul. I think we should hunt this person down and make him/her experience every 'Monday thing' there is. Then maybe Mondays would be given a slightly better reputation as ' just another day' so as to avoid all the yucky 'Monday-ness' we so whole heartedly swallow each and every week.
In any case seeing as how this is not likely to happen, I will do my tiny little part to make Mondays seem more tolerable. So here on my little blog, Mondays are here after known as "After The Sunday Funnies...Muckity Monday". Why did I name it this you ask? Mainly just because. I could leave it at 'after the sunday funnies' or 'muckity monday'. Or 'funny muckities' or 'sunday mondays'. Or 'sunny funday' or 'funny mucks'. Or 'f****ity muckities'....well, you get the picture. Mondays are usually all discombobulated and messed up like that. So it seems fitting that the post title on this day should be too. I mean, I can't totally clean up Mondays and not leave something in it messed up. So the post title it is!
I will insert some little one liner funny...usually pertaining to knitting...in an effort to lift the spirits of those readers who are mired in Monday hell, i.e. - me. But I'm not ruling out taking jabs at other Monday things too. Knitting is on the menu for today. Ziggy. Just can't go wrong with Ziggy.
Spring is almost here. Got a big taste of it the last couple of days. It's been gorgeous here in SE Mass for two days - sunny and 62 degrees. HooooooooooWeeeeeeee has it given me a baaaaaad case of spring fever!
This has been the longest, coldest, snowiest, dreariest winter...and we're all sick of it. The Robins are making their presence known. The Chipmunks are coming out of hiding. Crocuses are trying to make a showing despite the snow and ice. Little tufts of green grass are popping up here and there; all signs of change and new beginnings.
I said something in my most recent post about frogging some knitting I've been doing. 'Frogging' in knitting terms refers to the unraveling...or as I more aptly refer to it as "ripping the damn thing back to the beginning"...of a current OTN project when a mistake(s) in the knitting has been discovered somewhere along the way. Usually the only way to correct it is to unravel it to the point of the mistake and redo it. The term frogging came to be because when unraveling knitting, it makes a 'ribbit ribbit' sound. Sort of.
Anyway.
I do on occasion rip back something I'm knitting. Believe it or not, it typically doesn't frustrate me when I have to do this. I just kinda take it with a grain of salt, do what I gotta do and move on. I LOVE to knit and would rather be doing that than most any other thing I can think of, except maybe sing and get lost in my music - it's a very close race there. Most knitters find frogging a rather offensive action to take, especially if one has invested countless hours and miles of yarn in current said project. But this doesn't mean that I NEVER get flustered about having to frog something. I've had my moments. A few of my frogged projects have found their way to being balls of crinkled yarn filled with catnip for the cat. He gets the better end of the deal in this thing.
OK. So after rambling on about frogging here, I'm getting to the real point of this post: When I find the need to frog some knitting I have in hand, my brain ALWAYS finds it's way to a Tom and Jerry cartoon from my childhood. Don't ask me why this happens. It's just the way my brain seems to work.
The cartoon is called "Pecos Pest". Jerry's Uncle Pecos comes from Texas to visit his nephew and is preparing to be on a TV show. Uncle Pecos carries around his guitar and sings pretty much all the time. He also breaks guitar strings like they grow on trees...or in this case, on Tom's face. [Insert a fearless Uncle Pecos and the plucking of long whiskers here].
The song Uncle Pecos is constantly gracing us with is "Froggy Went A Courtin' Crambone". His version of it is WAY better than the version I learned in first grade. Especially with the stuttering and the substitution of other words because the stutter prevents him from singing the correct words here and there.
The very talented Shug Fisher (aka Shorty Kellum in The Beverly Hillbillies) voices Uncle Pecos in an otherwise wordless feature. It's mind boggling how well he voices this part. Throughout the years of their existense and popularity Tom and Jerry were never given speaking roles except in very early shorts where out of the blue Tom or Jerry may say one word...but very rarely. The animated shorts relied entirely on sight gags and silent voice slapstick, a method that worked very well for Hanna-Barbera.
It's a a full six and a half minutes of hilarity. I'm sure I've seen this cartoon short a thousand times in my life time and it NEVER fails to make me guffaw like the very first time I saw it. It's a kind of humor I grew up with and relate to. Again, don't ask me why. It just is. The creators of Tom and Jerry, Hanna-Barbera, were sheer genius in their day.
Last night I was knitting along and even without having to frog what I'm working on, Uncle Pecos and his Froggy Went A Courtin' came to mind. I've been humming it ever since. I woke up this morning with the tune in my head, complete with all the cartoonish sound effects that make it so great.
I've included the animated short here for your enjoyment. I hope the next time you must resort to frogging some knitting, Uncle Pecos and his little ditty will pop into your head. It really does keep the production of cat toys to a minimum.
Dig them c-c-c-c-c-c-c-razy boots man!
Have a knit pickin' good day ya'll.......Ohhhhhhhh doodle bop nop bop Crambone!
I should know better than to open my big bazoo about certain things I think or feel. I'm a believer in "watch what you say or it might come back to bite you in the butt". Such is true in the world of knitting...at least it is for me.
I've been known to spout off on more than an occasion or two about how much I dislike knitting gauge swatches. I think it just wastes valuable fun time knitting the actual project at hand. But I will knit a swatch if somewhere in my head there's doubt. I didn't have doubt this time.
Anyway.
This past week I started knitting stuff for a small layette for my sister's baby. She's due in June. I figure this will give me enough time to knit up some cute little things and get them sent off to her in Texas. (I have to keep reminding myself that where she lives is a sauna in sweltering heat come bout April...and I'm sitting here in Massachusetts up to my neck in snow and sub freezing temperatures...so she really has no need for to head to toe merino wool).
Again - anyway.
I'm ticking right along on a little sweater and some knitted Mary Jane's for her to be able to use come the fall. The projects are simple in the knitting and fun to do. About half way through the sweater I decided to measure and see where it sits gauge-wise. Big. Way, WAY BIG. And of course I didn't knit a swatch prior to starting the sweater. So "a frogging I will go". Dang it all.
