The All-New Bunrab

Knit Kimono by Vicki Squares - yes, this is a book to read, not just knitting patterns. Reviewed at Amazon here.

A Year Without "Made in China" by Sara Bongiorni. Subtitled "one family's true life adventure in the global economy." Amusing. They didn't quite manage to actually get through the year without buying anything made in China, both because Chinese stuff sneaks into other products in insidious ways, and because they have young children.

A Wrongful Death by Kate Wilhelm - latest in her Barbara Holloway series. In the previous volume, I had gotten impatient with Barbara for her endless dithering/whining about her relationships and her career; apparently, the author did too, because in this book Barbara sees a shrink and gets some stuff straightened out. Meanwhile, the mystery plot is good, and it's on the timely topic of medical prostheses.

We got the Christmas tree undecorated and folded up and boxed, but didn't manage to get it back to the storage unit, so the living room floor is a bit crowded at the moment. For some reason, we have the antique button accordion in its case, which Squirrel Magnet has been carrying around from house to house for years, in the living room, as well. And his City of Austin departmental fire warden's cap is on the sofa. I'm not sure how this stuff manages to get into our everyday space so easily. Library books, I understand.

Yesterday we went to the American Visionary Art Museum, for Cindy's birthday. My impression of "visionary art" for a while now has been "stuff made by people who hear voices" and nothing we saw there contradicted that impression. You know, pictures that god told them to draw and to write all over. Some people seemed to be channeling George Washington, King George III, and Jesus simultaneously. Many who had OCD. Fascinating stuff, but - people who hear voices in their heads.

We will be headed back to Texas on Wednesday. We'll be checking email while we're there. We'll be coming back Thursday the 31st. The pet sitter is already looking forward to it - she loves giving the chinchillas their dust bath! And Cindy will be dropping in as well, to play with little Vlad. (That's him in my icon.)

When we get back, I *promise*, pictures of Vlad, and of my latest completed knitting and crochet projects.

When I was doing that interests-images meme a couple of posts ago, one of the things that bugged the hell out of me was that for the interest "liberal," every single one of the images that the meme generator offered was not, in fact, for a liberal, but was an image of a cover of a book dissing liberals, or a t-shirt or poster ditto, or in some cases, not just dissing, but outright hate speech against liberals. Now, that bugs me. If I really thought about it, I'd probably go back and boycott the whole meme, until they fix that, to replace those pictures with something that genuinely reflects a person with an interest in liberal thought and politics. Since I'm too lazy to undo having done the meme, let me use this post to tell you all to add your complaints to mine, to the creators of the meme, please. And I've decided to make myself a few liberal icons, of which the first one is displayed with this post. This is a trial version of some downloaded icon-maker software, so it's not fancy, until I learn more about what it does. Shortly, expect a whole bunch o' liberal icons!