Tuesday evening things

 * the first finished thing from break; these are the Nutcracker socks from the WYS Christmas yarn for this year:

I have another pair on the needles but no photos yes, I have the first one finished and the second one just started. These are from a hand-dyer's yarn from, IIRC, Etsy, the dyer called the colorway "Vintage Christmas" - I'll take a picture when they're further along.

I tried to match the Nutcracker ones; I made them with a slightly shorter cuff than normal and kept track of where I started; the current pair I'm working on has a very long repeat and I made the cuff longer, so I worried about running short, so I didn't try to make them match.

I worked on a few other things but only one other finished item. 

* Have taught all my classes so far (I have three this spring). They are all smaller than they were in the before-times; I think the largest one is maybe fourteen? That does make it a bit easier for things like labs and grading.

* I did finally find out for sure that Interweave Knits is going all digital. I am very irritated with their new publisher (Golden Peak Media) because they have NOT notified the subscribers - I had to find the contact form and ASK. 

I'm also sad. I think this is the last truly knitting magazine I subscribed to; I dropped Knitters and Vogue years back (I know Vogue is gone, too, don't know about Knitters). I do still get Piecework and I guess it will continue; I think a different publisher adopted it (it feels like: a publisher who CARES. I have seen a number of magazine publishers be bought out by big equity-type firms and then the next thing you hear is they're ceasing publication. It seems more and more companies just want to strip mine all the value out of things as fast as they can, and then leave the customers with nothing. It's disappointing).

I did contact them, I basically said "I am disappointed you did not notify your customer base (a lot of us having more than 20 years with the magazine) and I do not want the "digital" version going forward, I would like a refund for the balance of my subscription"

And I got word back. But. It was a form letter a "oh we look forward to serving our customers with our exciting new digital concept!"

Did I say anywhere I liked it? Did I say anywhere I was anything but annoyed and disappointed? I know, I know, they don't CARE, no company cares any more and we're all just out here all on our own and I guess I should be glad there's still a GROCERY in my town so I don't starve but......so many things that made my life better and happier have gone away lately, and I have had nothing to replace it - first losing Quilty and a few other magazines a couple years back, then Doki Doki crate being bought out and deciding "We'll only sell snack-food boxes from now on" and now Interweave. 

I need to find some small pleasant fun things to make life feel worth it, but I'm not seeing much out there. I mean, yes, I guess I save money without those subscriptions, but it makes my life smaller and less and sadder. 

I also admit I'm offended at how off hand they were about it, first not telling anyone formally, and then sending me that dumb annoying chirpy letter about how GREAT the digital thing will be. Hey Golden Peak? Don't aim a "golden stream" at my leg and tell me it's raining. I am suspicious of the whole "your property resides in the cloud" model - seeing how some folks have seen digital books they bought evaporate, or programming be removed from streaming services. 

Anyway. I hope there's something nice and fun in the future for me but these past few years have really taught me not to hope for it.

* I also found out that Quixotic Fibers plexed into two stores - one, with the original owner and the person doing the dyeing moved to Florida, another one with one of the employees opening in Denison and YES that means the yarn shop is closer but I'm nervous because I saw another yarn shop in Sherman that lasted about a year before shutting down - at least in Whitesboro it was close enough to North Dallas that some of the well-off folk there would go there; I doubt many folk will drive an hour north to Denison. I hope I'm wrong and I don't lose the only non-big box chain yarn store within literally a couple hours of me. 

But it DOES feel that knitting and these types of hobbies in general are contracting. Some of it is, I'm sure, some of the shop owners and dyers want to retire (the "knitting boom" started in the mid 1990s, so, what, 30 years ago now?) but also I think people just have less time and energy for hobbies now - a lot of us have had to take on more responsibility at work, and work's expanded into people's homes now since the pandemic, and maybe......everyone is just giving up because they're tired? I know I play the dumb little matching games on my phone more than is really good for me but some afternoons I am so tired and spent when I get home that I can't face doing anything that has a higher activation energy.

Anyway, things are changing and very much not for the better

* And I know, people say "be the change you want to see in the world" but that's hard when you're working full time and you really don't have the money to, say, start up a small magazine (even a 'zine style one all in black and white; you'd need money to pay the designers and then print it and mail it). So those of us like me are at the mercy of the folks who MIGHT have the money, and it feels increasingly like the smaller companies get gobbled up by big ones that don't want to make yarn or publish or foster creativity, that ALL they care about is money and if that means doing something akin to short-selling or buying and shutting down successful businesses, they will.

There's the joking saying among hobbyists that "Y will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no Y" where Y can be books or yarn or cooking tools or whatever, and it feels increasingly like the world is saying "NO WE JUST WANT MONEY" and......in addition to bankrupting nice things, you also get things like rental models where they seem to try to see how much they can possible get away with nickel-and-diming people. And yeah, I know everything is expensive now but from the outside, in a lot of cases, it feels like the rich wanting to get incrementally more rich right now, rather than keeping a functioning business for the future that might make them more rich but less and more slowly....

ugh, am I turning radical in my old age? I don't know. But a lot of things have soured me in recent years, and not a lot to sweeten me.

* I'll be glad when this week is over. I can't believe it's only Tuesday, I've had to do a lot of things to help people and also I have one person being very demanding and acting like they're entitled to stuff because they are an athlete, and I never like that.