* I finished the ribbing and did most of the first row (just a knit-plain in one color) on the chart for the Great Horn-Rimmed. Perhaps I will be more motivated to work on this with the whole "pattern appears as you knit" thing - one of the problems I have with "knitting plain," is that too often it's inches upon inches of doing exactly the same thing, and it seems when you measure (to see if you've got far enough), there are still too few inches done.
Still, I will say: this kind of colorwork is not that portable. Though I do like it better than the colorwork I've done in the past with worsted weight, where the fabric was very stiff and the natural "give" of wool was kind of gone. I am reminding myself to keep a loose hand with the yarns so it doesn't contract the knitting.
* Having something like that - concentration requiring and that I want to get a bit done on - is nice. It does help "de track" my mind from whatever it is that was bothering me, whether it's something local or global.
* I never did take out a Netflix subscription but now am having second thoughts about it after reading this and the original article that Friar linked to, there.
I LOVE older movies. I pay $5 extra or something a month for the "movie tier" just so I can have TCM. And it does make me sad that those seem to be increasingly hard to find outside of assembling your own dvd library. (And the comment, made elsewhere, "Are the people who run Netflix all under 30" - ugh, but, I will say, when I was in my 20s? Even then, I preferred the older movies. More interesting, often better made). Maybe if so much of Netflix' content is forgettable recent rom-coms (ugh) or action movies, or their own house-made content, I stick with Amazon Prime (that's the free video I was referring to earlier, Tat - if you have the Prime delivery service, you also get some streaming video for free). I will say one minor annoyance is that all of these services seem to periodically and randomly remove content. I suppose it's some kind of a copyright issue but I admit it feels a bit like the thing my cable provider periodically does, where they send out a letter saying that such-and-such channel or set of channels is being obstinate, and doesn't want to negotiate a new deal, and we will likely lose those channels.....and then a month or so later, we get a note that our cable bill is going up yet again, but HEY, WE SAVED YOUR CHANNELS!
Yeah great.
That said - the Newsweek article alludes to a new TCM-offered streaming service perhaps coming, and while I don't think I can get that over my dvd player (it will hook up to Hulu or Amazon Prime or Netflix), still, it might be worth considering, especially if there is a separate dongle* I can buy to plug in to my tv that would let me watch that way (I kind of hate watching on my little laptop screen, though i suppose I could rig a way to plug the laptop into the tv and project whatever it is on the tv screen...)
(*Yes, my inner 12 year old laughs at that word).
I keep Amazon Prime mainly for the delivery service - free, two-day delivery on many things. And when you live in Beyond Far East (the "Disney" version of the acronym BFE) like I do, where arranging a trip to a bookstore means an hour's travel time IN ADDITION to the time you are there, and you might as well block out time to go to the big grocery store while you're down there, because (a) Hey, Texas doesn't have sales tax on groceries! and (b) there's lots of stuff you can't find locally....well, it gets old fast. A lot of the time if I need or want a book (need is more likely to be an academic need, so it's likely to be a book Books A Million won't have anyway), it's faster to order it on the two-day delivery than it is to drive to Books A Million and hope they have it. (And if they don't, they would order it, but that means another trip back there, so why?)
And yes, I get that part of the reason I have no nice local retail is me doing stuff like this but honestly? We didn't exactly have a bookstore (other than the campus one that is 95% textbooks) to begin with.
And just yesterday I was looking unhappily at my dwindling supply of Golden Syrup (the preferred tea-sweetener these days) and realized there is NOWHERE I know of (that I can easily get to - I am sure the H-E-B or some such in Dallas would have it) that I can buy it in-person. (I did order some off Amazon, but annoyingly, its delivery is apparently delayed to the end of the month).
(Golden Syrup is SO GOOD. Why do not more American groceries carry it? The local wal-mart has about eight kinds of "agave nectar" but no golden syrup. I presume that's because people have bought the hype that it's something that somehow is like sugar without affecting your body like sugar - which isn't true, just as coconut sugar is no better for you than regular sugar, or date sugar, or whatever).
I will say I spend some time on an interactive "mapping" site and one of their features was things like income level, etc., and I think I now know why this part of the state is pretty much a black hole as far as shopping is concerned - no one really has any money for anything other than Wal-mart or the dollar stores :(
I just get so weary of having to essentially plan a full day for a Sherman trip; I wish I had some of that stuff closer - a better grocery with more diversity (and not Wal-mart's policy of (a) slow restocking and (b) randomly dropping products and brands), a proper bookstore, and something fun like the Ulta or the JoAnn's. But I doubt we get that, not with some big economic improvement....
* I dunno. There still seems to be so much in the world that is distressing - the earthquake in Mexico, now (footage from it is horrifying), and the hurricane hitting Puerto Rico (and the devastation from Irma in much of the Caribbean). And other stuff. Locally an incident of thieves taking about $20,000 of copper wire (crud, that's a LOT of copper. What is it going for per pound now?) from the lamp-posts in a resort area. Oh, I am sure the justification some will make is "those are rich folks and they can afford the loss" but it's still wrong. It still makes someone else's life difficult and unhappy.
(Edited to add: apparently it's $20,000 worth of DAMAGE that must be repaired, the copper stolen was worth far less. But the thieves don't care about that because any amount of copper they get is free money....)
And still news about people in positions of authority abusing that authority. I don't know what it is - does power corrupt, or does the promise of power (and the perks it carries) attract people who are perhaps less scrupulous? Or is it harder for the earnest and awkward and honest to navigate the minefield that is small-town politics? Hard to know. (Though I think some of these are appointed positions...)
Again, I find it frustrating. I know it's because I carry some remnants of the childhood belief that there should be fairness or at least justice in the world, and I get frustrated that if I park a little bit wrong in a space, I face a $20 ticket - which I then feel bad about the rest of the week, and not because I'm out $20 - but other people embezzle or intimidate or whatever and seem to feel no remorse for it. (And in some cases, the people-doing-wrong do it for years, and accumulate a lot of "goodies" before they are found out). And yes, I know, I shouldn't compare my life to other people's and I should be "in it" for service to others, but it does make me frustrated to see so many people working hard and scrabbling and sometimes not getting the things they need, when others break the rule and seemingly get every want fulfilled....
* I found out on Ravelry yesterday that Patternworks is closing forever. Apparently Interweave bought out their pattern rights, so the patterns are still available, but as a catalog store (I never got to either of the shops), they are gone.
This makes me slightly sad though I haven't ordered from them in years. Patternworks - back when it was still the original owners, when it was in New York state - was one of the first places I ordered from when I really got into knitting. Much of my Socka yarn (another vanished brand, I think) came from there. It was always a big day when their fall catalog came, and I would read through it and plot and look at what disposable income I had to see if I could get what I wanted.
I also remember the slightly chilling frontpage they had for a while after Sept. 11, 2001 - asking for information, if any, on the whereabouts of a missing man. Presumably he was one of the ones killed in the Towers but someone kept holding out hope he was either injured in a hospital somewhere or had run away and hadn't been able to contact loved ones....
Eventually, they were sold out to the Keepsake Quilting company. The store moved and the catalog changed - it seemed less-extensive, and especially less sock-weight yarn (my favorite to knit with, even for sweaters). I ordered less and less from them....
and yes, I have too much yarn and am still on a buying-fast (might break that in October if Laura is up for a meet-up) and there are other places (Webs being a big one) I like to order from these days, but it still makes me sad, that one link with the 20-years-ago-now time when I first got back into knitting is gone. (So are a lot of the old free-pattern websites. In some cases people migrated to Ravelry, which is fine and good, but I remember the serendipity of discovering stuff back in those early days...)
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