I never seem to get as much done over the weekend as I would like to.

(And NO, this is not a long weekend for me. Just about everyone else has the day off - the local schoolkids, the banks, the post office, even some of the small businesses, but we do not get the day off. I tend to feel somewhat resentful towards having to work on a day when there's no mail.)

I did get some work done on the hood - which goes surprisingly slowly, considering it's mostly just plain flat knitting. I also finished the first of the Opal Magic socks (but the picture I took came out way too dark, so I think I'll just wait until I have both of them done. (I'm trying to make them identical; I wound off a lot of the yarn and started at the same point in the pattern on the second sock. I do not know why suddenly having identical socks of the self-patterning yarns are so important to me - they were not, formerly - but there you are).

I didn't start the 'phage socks. I realized I had left my chart in my office and didn't feel like going over to get it. And besides - I think I want to finish a pair of socks that's on the needles first.

Some ideas I have for future socks:

Bacteriophage socks

My various prairie-socks ideas (I think I have four written down; one of them will require a little more research for the color patterning). I STILL want to do some kind of little self-published pamphlet of these; maybe even doing the "free with evidence you've contributed to Nature Conservancy" type thing. I don't know. Or I might buy some webspace and put them up as .pdf files and offer them as - what's it called? "Honorware"? Where "If you like the patterns here, please send $5 to the Nature Conservancy or another conservation group"?

A pair of socks - using the pattern of decreases that Nancy Bush uses on the Miranda socks to give them shaping - but using the lace pattern that supposedly was used on Queen Elizabeth I's stockings ("Mrs. Montague's Pattern.")

The pair of cabled socks I was talking about the other day - the cabling pattern is called "Compressed cables" or summat like. It's an interesting pattern and I think will make a neat sock.

I also want to figure out if there's a way to work the Barbara Walker pattern she calls "Eiffel Tower" from the top down (so I can work it into a standard cuff-to-toe sock). Or, if not, learn to do toe-up socks so I can do Eiffel Tower socks. (Of course, if I were better at doing cabled charts, I could probably work one up - a big one, just one, on the front of each sock - in cabled or twisted stitches.)

I emailed Brandy Agerbeck to let me know the order had arrived, and she said that putting up a photo of Mr. Scissorsuit was OK.

So here he is, in all his happy shininess:



The photo's a little dark (you can't see the scissors on his suit), but I like to not use flash when I can avoid it.

The little guy next to Mr. Scissorsuit is a hedgehog - also by Brandy, based on her Numo. I had had the little guy up on the wall in my bedroom but he and Mr. Scissorsuit seem to get along well so maybe I'll keep them together from now on.

I smile every time I see Mr. Scissorsuit. (Not all art has that kind of power).

I like things that are kind of whimiscal and fun and that make me smile. I knew people - especially in college - who were horrified by the fact of people putting up whimsical things in their houses or finding artwork that they LIKED and that went with the room's color scheme. Sort of the anti-burgeois (that's the word they'd use) people. I don't know. I guess I don't agree with them so much on the state of the human condition; we're only here for a short while, I'd argue, why not spend that while trying to be happy?

I'd rather leave the art-that-tries-to-work-through-human-tragedy in the gallery or the museum and go and visit it when I need that kind of influence in my life; for my home, I want the kind of art that celebrates human creativity or the human spirit or that makes me smile or that reminds me of something else that makes me smile.

The framed artwork that I have up on the walls tends to lean heavily towards French commercial posters from the 1880s to the 1950s or so (One of my favorite, favorite ones - which you can see in some of the shots taken in my living room, like this one is an advert (from the 30s, I think - the poster itself is a reprint but I think the advertisement is from the 30s, originally) for the Pathe record label. I like it because I think the graphic design is cool, and because I like the association of it (a lot of the chanson artists I like originally recorded on Pathe), and, well, I have to admit, it also matches my sofa. (I know, I know, they say "Great art should not match your sofa." Whatever.).

I also have botanical prints up on the walls. And a few reprints of Maxfield Parrish posters. And some framed cards from Carl Larsson paintings.

I tend to like calm and happiness to surround me in my house. I suppose there are some who think that's shallow, that we should be reminded of the difficulties of the human condition at all times - and I know there'd be people, even people I know and like, who'd be all eye-rolly if they saw my house, with its pastels and its large number of stuffed things sitting around and with the other things that I have that I (gasp) enjoy in a non-ironic sort of way.

I don't know. I think I said some months back that I was kind of done with the post-modern snarky deconstructionist "everything in the world is so serious so let us act as if nothing should be taken seriously" attitude-of-irony. To me, a lot of it seems like so much teenage posturing - the whole "I'm too cool to be interested in anything" attitude.

Well, I'm not cool. In many ways, I'm a big geek. And if by being a geek that means I get to express my appreciation for and enjoyment of things in a way that cool people wouldn't, I'm just fine with that.