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Knitting up the ravell’d sleeve of broccoli

knitted potatoes

In case you’re not sure what you’re looking at there, it’s knitted potatoes and tomatoes and other garden vegetables. They represent a small part of an entire knitted garden dreamed up by some British biddies. That’s 300 people, fifty miles of yarn and four million stitches.

I’m not much into knitting, mind you (that would be my big brother), but Pupster sent me a link to the excellent Stitchy McYarnpants Museum of Kitschy Stitches a few days ago, so the topic just seemed… knitted in the stars or something.

I’m going to need all the cheap and easy blogfodder I can get for a while. A real estate agent had a look at Weasel Manor over the weekend and left me a To Do list that included items such as “douse livingroom in gasoline and light match” and “write ‘I Will Never Buy Another Knick-Knack In My Whole Stupid Miserable Life’ one hundred times — in own blood.”

If you haven’t figured it out on your own, I’m not a very good grownup. The process of hiring and directing workmen is not one I’m likely to do well. I was on the phone all day asking the important interview questions like, “would you like to see me hang a spoon on my nose?” and “recite three recent booger haiku you have written.”

I’m doomed.

Comments


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: November 12, 2007, 6:54 pm

Where do you want the links, Weas? Comments, or email? I think email would be better, but – well – remember, I’m a maroon.

-And – yes – I assume that every cow orker (bless their perverse li’l noggins) in your office will be looking over your shoulder all the time, so I won’t intentionally get you into trouble.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: November 12, 2007, 7:20 pm

Awww…bless your heart, McGoo, that’s sweet. It wasn’t a bleg, though. I’m sure I can pull something out of my ass every day.

Anyhoo, I can’t get email AT ALL at work; all outside mail and webmail is blocked. For a while, I could get around it by telnetting in to a UNIX shell account and checking webmail with Lynx, but my stupid ISP changed the “login” button to a javascript and broke it.

If you understood that last sentence, kindly give yourself a wedgie for being Poindexter McGeekerson.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: November 12, 2007, 7:31 pm

Whoa. That statement was hot.

Makes me want to go look at a flowchart, or sumpin, and I haven’t gawked at a nekkid coding sheet in years. I could go blind.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: November 12, 2007, 8:19 pm

Well, here’s one for you anyway. Marble Falls is where I was looking for property in Tx earlier this year.

http://www.rootsweb.com/~txburnet/BadgerHouse.html

I will go by there next trip (soon!). I know exactly where the streets are.


Comment from iamfelix
Time: November 12, 2007, 11:55 pm

Stoaty – Did you get the emails I sent last week?

I’m not a very good adult, either, and I’m several years older’n you. And this whole year seems to be designed to keep slapping me in the face with that fact. I had to put my oldest kittycat (16 1/2 yr. Felix) in the hospital yesterday … and the news so far is not promising. I can’t wait for 2008 – it’s got to get better.

I can crochet, but have no desire to do vegetables (or fruits). I’ve tried to learn to knit several times, but it’s apparently beyond me. My next-door-neighbor in the dorm @ college taught me to crochet, and it’s one of the 2 useful things I learned while there (the other being DJ work at the college radio station, which had nothing to do with my academics). I’m currently crocheting 2 afghans for Christmas presents.

Hope you glom onto a home-improvement practitioner that is both capable and personable. They *are* out there.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: November 13, 2007, 7:25 am

No, Felix! No emails from you! I’ve had a BUTTLOAD of spam lately, though. I may have biffed it by accident. Please re-send.

Now, that is just wrong. It sounds like life was sucking enough for you without your cat getting sick. “Sick pet” is about the most uncomplicated, pure grief I know.


Comment from Gibby Haynes
Time: November 13, 2007, 8:06 am

Yeah, my English Springer Spaniel died last summer. I haven’t cried like that for years. In fact, I haven’t cried for years anyway, but that set me off like a big fat bitch.
My condolences. I hope he/she pulls through.
On BBC 2’s (yeah, I watched a piece of BBC programming, I know, I know – I’m effectively advcating the arbitrary, undemocratic and anachronistic TV Licence) Autumn Watch last night they had some hardcore mustelid action. There was trotting, rolling, staring into camera with a ‘what are you fruits looking at?’ expression, and greedy snarfing of things like donuts, honey-covered (what looked like) breakfast cereal and Victoria Sponge cake. These were Pine Martens, and they were cat-sized.
Jesus fuck, it’s so cold. Gah.


Comment from jwpaine
Time: November 13, 2007, 11:15 am

Our oldest cat (20+) died earlier this year, peacefully, in her sleep, atop the dirty laundry pile, comforted in her final moments, no doubt, by the closeness of things that smell like my butt. I buried her down by the place I buried our stallion (struck by lightning and killed instantly three years ago, as a rather messy headlight-illumined necropsy at 11:30pm revealed), my gelding (died of reasons unknown), and my wife’s goat Xenia (long, lingering wasting-away following a dog attack).

Gee, I certainly wasn’t planning on spending the morning recalling that all flesh is grass….


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: November 13, 2007, 12:47 pm

“…comforted in her final moments, no doubt, by the closeness of things…” -jwp-

You have a delicate sense of imagery, jw. I really like it.


Comment from jwpaine
Time: November 13, 2007, 12:51 pm

Thanks, Steamboat. That delicacy is the result of years of training.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: November 13, 2007, 1:00 pm

I have friends that raise horses,and what happened to your stallion happened to one of their horses. We made a rather startling observation the next morning about said horse that I will not sully this thread by describing. Suffice to say, the horse should have been named Cass.

I wonder if lightning has an affinity for equine targets?


Comment from jwpaine
Time: November 13, 2007, 1:31 pm

Naw, they’re just outside, where the lightning is. Our vet, originally from Missouri, told me (while we were disemboweling the stallion’s corpse and putting samples of this and that into baggies) that lightning strikes on cattle are very common in the Strike Me state, and that only 20% of lightning strikes leave visible marks.

Incidentally, if you want to remember facts, have somebody tell them to you while you’re straining to keep a horse’s thoracic cavity open while the fact-giver removes its heart and lungs.

“Cass”? Sorry, I’m just a simple country boy; your clever city lingo confuses me, so please explain a bit less cryptically.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: November 13, 2007, 1:41 pm

Aw, c’mon, jw. You know the words!

There was a young Stallion named Cass
Whose balls were made out of brass
When he clanked them together
They made stormy the weather


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: November 13, 2007, 1:46 pm

I can honestly say I have never been the recipient of a fact-filled lecture while straining to keep a horse’s thoracic cavity open and the fact-giver removes its heart and lungs.

Seems to me it would be a bit distracting, but that’s just me.

That “thoracic” looks so wrong. But my Firefox dictionary (newly updated with the word “shitload” just yesterday!) can’t possibly be wrong, can it?


Comment from jwpaine
Time: November 13, 2007, 1:47 pm

Testicular metal’s no joke.
They clank like two pigs in a poke.
Too, it’s indubitable,
You’ll find them inscrutable,
And don’t even mention the smoke!


Comment from jwpaine
Time: November 13, 2007, 1:48 pm

Yeah, I had to look it up, since “thorasic” looked even wronger.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: November 13, 2007, 2:02 pm

I wus thinkin’ “thoractic” but I wuz reely rong two.

The Morning of the Lightning-Struck Horse was truly memorable. Someday I shall put it into verse.

The imagery. The imagery.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: November 13, 2007, 3:33 pm

I once read a rumor on the internet that we buried my mom with the dog. This is not true. The dog is buried under a tree, my mother was cremated and sprinkled some years later, and I’m not even sure it was in the right spot. She always said, “under the sycamore tree” or maybe it was “hickory.” Anyhow, after she died, it dawned on me I wasn’t there when they buried the dog and I wouldn’t know a thus-and-such tree if it danced into the livingroom singing showtunes, so I just picked a tree vaguely in the direction she always pointed.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: November 13, 2007, 5:57 pm

…and you read this rumor on the net? Promulgated by whom?

Or is this another one of those “I missed or misunderstood something” moments that seem to be occurring more often?


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: November 13, 2007, 6:19 pm

Um – I think I understand now. Genealogy? Family web site?


Comment from iamfelix
Time: November 13, 2007, 6:46 pm

Stoaty – I re-sent the emails. My kitty Felix not doing well at all today … I might have to make “a decision” when I visit him tonight (I get off work @ midnight). I’m dreading it. I visited him before work, and he was really weak.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: November 13, 2007, 7:28 pm

I got the emails, Felix — what a fantastic house! I love that era of American architecture.

Damn, I’m so sorry about kitty Felix. I’ve only had to make that decision once, and (of course it would be) it was my favorite cat ever. The one I hope will be waiting for me if I’m lucky enough to get into Kitty-cat Heaven. It’s a more awful thing to live through than many experiences that, by objective measure, matter a lot more. Ummm…if you know what I mean. Anyhow, I’ll be thinking of you and Felix.


Comment from Lokki
Time: November 14, 2007, 10:49 am

My cat was my friend
For twenty years of my life.
I miss his meows.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: November 14, 2007, 12:26 pm

Hey, Lokki!

Long time…

I was beginning to wonder if you might be being “Boy Georged” in the Filter or something.


Comment from jwpaine
Time: November 14, 2007, 1:24 pm

That Lokki may be spending time (again!) in the filter reminds me of that joke about the guy and the bear that ends with the punchline “You don’t come here for the hunting, do you?”


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: November 14, 2007, 1:41 pm

Um, I didn’t mean Lokki was – you know – “cooperating”. I figured he’s been captured and chained to a wall or sumpin.

Maybe he’s writing an epic poem? We can hope. Gee, I hope it has mooning in it.

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