I was disciplined last night and started one of the gift-items I need to make (well, I need it for next Thursday, so I figured I had better get cracking.)

It's a knitted notebook-cover (from "101 Designer One-Skein Patterns"). You knit it to cover a 5" by 7" notebook. I have one of those "anonymous" (as in, you don't know who in the group will wind up with your gift) gift-exchanges coming up and I thought it might be a good gift, especially coupled with a nice pen or two (some of the local gift shops sell ball-points that are inscribed with flowers or such).

Now, I'm not so sure. Maybe it's a mingy looking gift - some of the members of this group, ones who have more time (there's a $10 price limit) spend a lot of time scouring gift shops and malls and places like Overstock.com for SPECTACULAR gifts, things that were more than $10 originally but get marked down on clearance. And I suspect some folks may flout the $10 limit and just buy whatever they want.

But I'm of two minds about this - the gift I got last year from the exchange was a large and elaborate cookie jar that is too large for my limited counter space, is specifically Christmas-themed (which means you have it out for maybe a month a year). And living in a house where ants are more often a reality than a possibility, cookie jars are not really that useful to me.

And some of the members are at the "downsizing" point in their lives - where they're moving to a smaller place, or not buying lots of fancy elaborate stuff, and maybe a practical gift - a nice notebook and a couple of nice pens (I might, even though it comes close to breaking the $10 limit, buy a book of stamps and slip it in there, too. Or some other kind of stationery-themed item.)

So I don't know. Part of me is all, "I've got this neat skill and I want to show it off" but part of me is also "Don't be all fiber-geeky on people who probably don't really care" (That said - the hats I've done in the past have been well-received).

Interestingly enough, TChem is talking about fiber-geekery and science-geekery and trying to limit people's exposure to either when they might not be interested.

I know I sometimes go a little anorakishly overboard with some things - more likely the fiber-stuff than the science-stuff, at least when I'm talking with "civilians" (I like that term for "people outside of my sphere of interest" better than I like "muggles," which some knitters use. I know, I know, "Muggles" is the Harry-Potter-World term for non-magical people but it still seems to have a slightly derogatory connotation to me in the way that some knitters use it, that "civilians" does not: it suggests "They're not initiated into the Mystery!" and to me, "civilian" means "they work in a different area than I do" or "they have a different frame of reference."). That's probably because I get enough sciencey-talk at work, yet I don't have a SnB group or really anyone outside of my Invisible Internet Friends who cares all that much about fiber.

And yeah, TChem, I agree with the annoyance of someone who wasn't tormented by their peers in school declaring themselves "nerdlike" just because geekery is developing some kind of cachet. (I don't even really consider myself as having been that big of a geek in high school. Certainly in junior high and middle school, which were a sort of Hell on Earth considering the way I was treated. But I went to a private school where most of us had been outcasts of some sort in earlier grades, and I actually kind of fit in - or, if not fit in, exactly, at least I had the respect of SOME of my peers, and that was a new and different thing).

Look, if you were a "Popular" just go with that. Don't try to pretend to be something you were not just because you think it will make you look cooler to have that "Ugly Duckling" story arc in your life. (It's kind of the old "Oh, I know just how you feel!" syndrome, like the person who comes to equate being teased by a few classmates from, say, Italian families because they were from a Polish family, when someone who is Black is talking about the real hurdles they had to clear to gain acceptance in a largely-white community).

Oh: and NO ONE enjoys their teenage years, except a few freaks. Being a teenager is, I think, supposed to stink. It's what makes you want to ditch being an adolescent and become a real adult. It's the people who loved being a teenager so much that they're still acting totally like one at 30 that you have to watch out for.