Another book from a favorite blogger

Monday night I stopped by a book store on the way home and saw that they had Crazy Aunt Purl's book "Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair." It was $16 even. When was the last time you bought something that didn't involve fractions of dollars?

When I got home at about 10pm, I read it straight through and was done by 12:30am. It was very much like her blog, not surprisingly. The biggest difference was there was that the book was a narrative of her divorce, use of knitting as a way to keep the hands busy and not calling up the ex, and recovery into a happier, fuller person. What was new to me, was the info about her romantic life, which her blog doesn't really address.

Her blog is more about the things she's doing to improve herself and her life, her friends, her knitting, and other random events in her life.

I really like CAP and think I like the blog better. There's more to the blog and no need to streamline it in order to fit a narrative.

Years ago I heard about blogs but didn't really know what they were. Then I heard that editors were reading blogs, looking for potential books. And now this week, I have two such books.

I think I like CAP more as a blog and not a book. Her charm, wackiness, wit, and wisdom, especially about letting go of her insecurities that so many women can identify with, doesn't come through in the book.

By contrast, Jane (Yarnstorm) Brocket's "Gentle Art of Domesticity" works very well as a book. Much of Yarnstorm's appeal are the pictures and the book is full of them. This book doesn't try to be a narrative and the different themes in her blog are organized by chapter in her book.

I haven't read very much of it yet. It sits on the side table and will be something I dip into a few pages at a time when I have time.

Gentle Art of Domesticity

Over the weekend, I received a copy of Jane Brocket's book The Gentle Art of Domesticity, which grew out of her blog, Yarnstorm. (See link at right).

Love. It. It's like having a copy of her gorgeous, picture-heavy blog to carry around with you.

She'll be coming 'round the mountain

Spent the weekend in the North Georgia mountains up by western North Carolina. The mountains are so densely wooded, you could see how Eric Robert Rudolph, the 1996 Atlanta Olympic (and abortion clinics and lesbian night club -- seeing a theme here?) bomber could have hid out there and evade capture for years.

Anyway, Husband arranged a nice little getaway for my birthday. He knows I like the mountains, and lakes, and the crafting, so we went to Hiawassee, Georgia on Lake Chatuge. North Georgia is under drought conditions and all outdoor watering has been banned. Here's a picture why:

This is the view from the top of the boat ramp. Under normal conditions, you back your boat trailer to the bottom of the ramp, and the boat would float. You can clearly see that lake levels have dropped so much.

We were going to go boating but never did. We did a lot of driving instead (yes and adding more emissions into the air, making the global warming problem worse). All the roads in the mountains are very, very windy, hence the title of this post. Husband did all the driving, which gave me time to knit (carefully). My take along project was Cosmic Pluto's easy top-down raglan cardigan, using Manos del Uruguay yarn and size 10 US needles. By the end of the trip this is what I got done:

It's for Sister, who chose the colors. The blue and orange stitch markers indicate where to increase at the arms.

Husband chose Hiawassee because of the lake, and on the other side of Lake Chatuge on the North Carolina side is the John Campbell Folk School and it's annual fall folk art fair. We had a late start to the day Saturday because Friday night is grill out night, with the attendent beer consumption and gin rummy card playing. I won by the way.

Anyway we got to the Folk School at 4pm, the folk art fair ends at 5pm. What I wanted most was to see the facilities, because I've heard they offer great pottery classes. I did get a look at their facilities, which are fine. But they're no better, as far as I can tell, than the Cobb County parks and recreation facility 3 miles from my house that I use now. For cheaper.

For dinner we went to the Old Hiawassee Grill at the Ridges Resort. Husband looked up the Ridges' fancier restaurant, Sequoyah, but it was on the other side of Lake Chatuge, in North Carolina, where we just were. D'oh!

Still it was a very nice dinner, we sat outside and looked at the sad, low-water-level lake, and enjoyed prime rib and grilled trout. Both entrees, with salad and bread, came out to $15 each. $15! You can't get those kind of prices with the same ambiance in Atlanta! On the other hand, I'm not going to drive 2 hours to Hiawassee everytime I want a nice $15 dinner.

Sunday we went to Moccasin Lake state park where the water was higher, but the one jon boat was rented out. So we visited the attached fish hatchery. Unexpectly, I quite enjoyed that.

There are these long concrete troughs with swarms of different sized trout (all the 4 inch babies together here, the 6 inchers there, the 9 inchers ready for release in yet another trough). I took many pictures, but you can't really get the scale of the thing.

Here's a poor, dying fish -- see the white scales, unlike the others? Every once in a while, the other fish would attack it and all you'd see is a swarm of them thrashing around. Husband said they were speeding up the dying process, so they could eat it.

Here's the 9 inchers which will eventually be released into the lake:

And here's the one I want for dinner:
We finished the trip by going to Tallullah Gorge. Here's the entrance to the Jane Hurt Yarn center. Jane hurt yarn? What did the yarn do to deserve it? I just had to take a picture:

The falls in Tallullah Gorge were very pretty, here's the view of the second water fall, from Overlook 2. The trails, by the way, are paved/lined with recycled tires, making them nice a springy.

Now we're home and veging and having salad for dinner, to make up for all the vacation calories.

Another nice thing? No cell reception in the mountains. So I had time to compose what I wanted to tell the board members to give them a heads up about Complaining Employee. Fortunately, no one's freaking out about it, and we'll just see what happens.

Hey, you know, I'll be able to get around that mountain too.

Bad week, continued

So it's Friday, I'm feeling like, Whew! Week's almost done! This weekend Husband and I are going to the mountains to the John Campbell Folk School arts and crafts weekend. We might rent a powerboat and go out on the lake up there.

Every week, at least once a week, I think about firing Complaining Employee. Monday was no different. But as the week went on, I thought, okay, we have a little crisis at work, but she's coming up with solutions, we can do this and get back on track. She has the skills and drive to get it done and it'll be okay.

I also resolved to hire a permanent bookkeeper. Enough with the temp agency.

This morning Complaining Employee asks if we can talk. I finish what I was doing and in my heart I was hoping she would resign. I went over to her office, she does a lot of complaining, all the while saying she loves the work but then it's not really her life passion, she's not looking for public recognition but feels let down that I didn't come by her workshop back in June, and so on. What the f?

She said she has a draft of her resignation letter (yay!) ready to send not just to me, but also the organization's board of directors, an outside assistance organization who came a few weeks ago, and our major funder. Can you believe that?!? What a passive-aggressive, manipulative, blackmailer!

Well, I thanked her for sharing all this, mea culpa for my part in the little crisis, yes I need to stop being reactive and be more proactive, apparently I haven't been as supportive as clearly she liked, and that I was confident that she had the skills to do this job (whining aside). I mean, she often brings up her past accomplishments which shows she can deal with the situation. Apparently however she was able to accomplish those things only with copious amounts of complaining along with it.

She also complained about my judgment to continue using temps from the temp placement agency that sent people with criminal backgrounds. But then felt that I didn't give the temp with the criminal background a chance to defend herself. Hello! You're the one freaked out by the possibility of identity fraud! She also threw in a couple of complaints against other staff and comments about me being young(er than she is).

That was in the morning. This afternoon, I get a call from a project partner saying they'd like to make Complaining Employee project director, not just coordinator. This, from the project director who in the begining didn't even like Complaining Employee. This is quite the turn around.

Next week all the project partners, including Complaining Employee and I, will sit down and talk about next steps, who does what, etc. There is a way to get back on track, and everything will work out one way or the other.

But for crying out loud, what to do about the passive-aggressive, manipulative, blackmailing?

As my mantra has become in the last year -- I'll think about it.

Loving the Manos del Uruguay

I finished My So-Called Scarf in Manos del Uruguay in Bramble. I really like Manos and wanted to play with the Manos I bought a few weekends ago when visiting Sister.

So, last night I cast on for a hat, using Manos in Adobe, for Sister's boyfriend, using a pattern and yarn he picked. It's a simple stockingnette (mostly) pattern, but with such richly colored yarn, that's all you need.

I'm also going to make Cosmic Pluto's Easy Top-Down Raglan cardigan for Sister, using some of the Manos in Eclipse. Yes, yes, I know I still have the Bi-colored Cables cardigan to fix, but the Manos is calling me and I am weak (and possibly under the influence of a white Russian).

So I cast on.

What is feminism?

I love reading Yarnstorm's blog (see link in sidebar). She has a wonderful eye for color, and she celebrates a domestic life that I don't have. As she mentions on her blog, what she posts there is just a small sliver of her life, just as what I post here, and my friends post on their blogs, are selected pieces of a whole, complicated (especially these past few weeks, but anyway....) life.

She has published a book called the Gentle Art of Domesticity that was used as a springboard for a vitrolic commentary against home arts. There's a link to the article in Yarnstorm's blog.

Basically, the commentor says is that any woman who spends time doing handcrafts and cooking is lame.

As many commentors to the newspaper points out, the point of the women's movement and feminism is self-determination, and the ability to have freedom of choice. And all choices are personal. Though yes, the personal is politcal.

There's a great exercise that we do at work, called the Tree of Life. We ask people to draw a tree and label the roots (your history), trunk (your present), leaves (your influences), flower and fruit (accomplishments), and buds (hopes).

My tree is the crape myrtle, a multi-trunked tree, which I label social activism, art/craft/creativity, and family. All three are important to me, are fed by shared roots and the same leaves, and the crown of the tree are interlaced branches.

I would say that everyone's life it like that: many equally important aspects all tangled together. The great thing about crape myrtles are that new trunks emerge all the time, like new interests and priorities in life.

So my feminism is to live a life that allows me to value each of those trunks.

Criminal record part 2

Last week I learn that the accountant the temp agency sent had a criminal record, regarding fraud. So they sent another accountant.

I should have asked for a background check on the other accountant first. Because today, after requesting it, I got the new person's background check which showed a possible warrant for her.

What's going on with this temp agency? They advertise on the radio, talk radio as well as NPR, touting that they are an international company, and they send me 2 people without clean records?

I know that people deserve a second chance, but I want to make that decision myself first, and with due diligence and thoughtfulness.

I told the temp agency to send me someone who definitely did not have a warrant out on them and I am willing to wait until later in the week if necessary.

I have such a headache now.