The Nose Knows

Who would have thought that an onion would be the cure for the ills caused by the H1N1 plague? Last night I happened upon a French blog, written by a desperate mother, who had relieved her daughter's residual swine flu cough by the old home remedy of cutting an onion in half and putting it under the bed. Supposedly the chemical that makes your eyes water helps stop those horrible, dry, hacking, asthma-like cough spasms which are very common among H1N1 victims. I was reading her post, in desperation myself, as I was gasping my way through yet another miserable, sleepless night. Armed with $50 worth of useless Walmart OTC cough remedies, I was ready to admit defeat. At that point throwing an onion under the bed at midnight just made sense. Sort of. It sounds crazy but low and behold, I had the first complete night's sleep in over 3 weeks. When I woke up with my alarm, I seriously thought I might be dead. I was afraid to move. No morning choking hackathon. No morning laryngitis. No gasping for air just trying to get from my room to the bathroom. It was weird. Very weird. I am not completely cured but progress was made in the right direction. Coinky dinky? I dunno but I'm sure putting another one under my bed tonight.

A New Best Friend

My new Golding La Fleur and I have begun to bond very nicely. It usually takes me a while to get used to a new spindle weight but this one is like an old friend. I bought her a ginormous bag of Merino roving to keep her company on the way home from Rhinebeck and although that will certainly keep her tied up for a very long while, I am still piling up quite a stash in her little queue. I have been tempted to buy her a twin sister from the Golding site but keep reminding myself that MD S&W is right around the corner and I should be able to avoid temptation until then. I already have 7 (yes 7) different spindle projects going at the moment-not counting the unholy mess on the new Russian Spindle and the 2 wheel projects. I fear I may be suffering from FADD. Fiber Attention Deficit Disorder. Someone stop me. Please.

The One That is Just Right

I finally figured out that if I go down a couple of needle sizes on this lacy little top down raglan pattern, I could get the size and drape I was looking for. My first attempt was all loosey-goosey and large enough for a 6 month old. No 6 month old baby would stand for wearing something so fussy, so it was critical that I get the newborn sizing just right. The whole idea behind the layette sweater is that it gives baby shower attendees something sweet to coo over-not neccesarily something that will be useful down the road. First time mother's have no idea what a real baby would do to something like this. I'm not telling them. They'll find out soon enough.

Unleashing a Firestorm on Myself

I don't have a photo to share today but if I did, it would be me scratching my head in disbelief.

I learned a painful lesson this week and it has NOTHING to do with yarn. The ancient flower child in me still loves a good protest so I made the mistake of trying to enlist fellow Ravelers in my fight to send Ebay the message that making fun of knitting and homemade gifts in general was not cool for a business that supplies crafters with craft materials. I had visions of millions of us hand crafters storming the Ebay castle with torches and pitchforks-but that is not exactly what happened.

Apparently, I am a giant crochet hating hufflebutt with no self esteem or sense of humor. The fact that I even saw a commercial because I watch TV leaves my intelligence suspect. And those are just some of the nicer comments I got.

Wowsa.

People can sure be mean.

This week Ravelry welcomed their 500,000th member and that could have been quite a force to be dealt with if the urge to fight Ebay was as strong as the urge to snark at each other. I have no idea how I became the bad guy in all this but I do know one thing: I am NEVER going near those forums again. It's a time warp back to high school. All name calling and hair pulling. Too bad.

I suppose Ebay knows the knitting demographics better then I do. You don't launch an expensive ad campaign without doing your homework. They knew who to attack and what the outcome would be. So I give up. If people start sniffing your handmades to see if they smell like church-you can't blame me. I tried.

Ebay is Full of Crap!

Let me apologize in advance for the amount of times I am going to use the word crap and its many variations in this post. I will explain....

Tonight while crashing on the couch in my usual after work stupor of TV surfing, I came upon a holiday commercial from one of my favorite online sites that left me completely dismayed. A guy is holding up a hand knit pair of mittens with a knitting granny in the background while pissing and moaning about the crappiness of handmade gifts. Now come on ebay, you sell me a lot of the crap I use to make those crappy handmade gifts. I was going to buy something from you tonight but I am taking my business to Etsy until you apologize for your crappy commercial.

So now what am I going to do with all those crappy socks I have been knitting as gifts? Ebay, you just ruined my Christmas, for crap's sake.

Nothing Much to Blog About

I have been too sick to do much of anything fiber-wise this past week and since I am still in my post "Rhinebeck got ruined" funk, I went and bought some more pencil roving from Fiber Optic over on Etsy. I still have my gorgeous Fiber Optic Autumn Leaves pencil roving sitting here-unspun but when I saw the Black Coffee colorway I knew it needed to be MINE. ALL MINE. I have plans for it all but for now I am content to just look at it. It is so pretty.

Tradition

Halloween equals homemade doughnuts around here. Several Halloweens ago and only days away from her deathbed after a brief battle with a mighty evil leukemia, my mother managed to stagger out to the kitchen to whip up a plateful for the family that were gathering for the last goodbyes. Lingering swine flu or not, yesterday morning I hauled my semi-sick butt out of bed and managed a small plateful that tasted mighty good with a hot pot of cafe au lait because I knew she would expect me to. Love you, Mom. And if you were watching from somewhere out there, I hoped you noticed that I did NOT forget the fresh ground nutmeg this year. It does make all the difference.