A really long group of links this week. Hope you find some of this interesting (do you? please, let me know!) and if you stick with it until the end, I promise you some hilarity for a good cause.

Media Nerds!

This is probably only for the nerds, but a look at Ars Technica’s experiment with ad-blocking readers.

The Washington post asks if comments on stories scare off sources.

Two articles from Huffington Post question why we’re giving a platform to people who are blatantly lying and that the “liberal” media is actually serving Republican interests.

News Junkies

The New York Time Magazine has an interesting look at building a better teacher. Really fascinating. (Fun fact: I actually seriously considered being a teacher at several points in my life. Then realized I’d kind of suck at it. I lack patience.)

Rolling Stone takes a look at the ways Wall Street is screwing the country over…and re-setting the conditions for another crash.

Can consumers wait for healthcare reform? Not really. And, seriously, the fact that anyone thinks it’s acceptable that health insurers can deny care if you’ve ever been sick or drop you if you have the audacity to become ill after paying into your policy for years is just sickening.

Eco-Geeks

Have you heard of A Month Without Monsanto? A woman attempts to go a month without using any GMO products from Monsanto. She’s got a lot of resources for what’s GMO free, if you’re looking to change your own diet, too.

Detroit is considering turning abanoned neighborhoods into green space. There’s a lot of objection, but I think this sounds like a pretty cool idea.

Over at Huffington Post, Maria Rodale looks at the issue of chemicals in the water and asks if our sexuality (and future) is at stake.

Passionate Wierdos

Peak Oil Hausfrau has an interesting look at magical thinking and the tyranny of positive thinking. This was an interesting read, though I’m still not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, I do think there is a lot of power in the way you think and interact with the world; on the other I agree with some of the points made in her blog and the links she incldues, that this expectation that people be positive and happy all the time isn’t helpful or productive.

The New York Times considers–can there be an upside to depression.

While you’re mulling that over, note that women who drink wine are less likely to gain weight. Just sayin’.

Productive Flourishing asks if you have weirdo syndrome. (Yes, yes I do.)

Edge Perspective looks at passion vs. obsession. One motivates, one isolates.

Nina Paley has an interesting look at the Cult of Originality (thanks to Ladybug, for the link!)

Crafty Folks

Pagan Dad offers some tips for dying eggs naturally, so whether you celebrate Easter or Ostara, definitely check it out.

A Bit O’ Shine made some adorable decorations using buckets and moss. I like this idea a lot, and it’s a great way to bring some green inside this spring.

Smitten Kitchen has a drool-inducing recipe for St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake. I am going to gain 100 lbs because of Smitten Kitchen.

Also, here’s a cake with writing IN THE CAKE. Not on the cake, IN the cake. It’s fiddly and complicated and I absolutely want to try it.

Finally….I present to you, people dancing on camera for a good cause.

The problem with jumping from project to project is that I don’t have very much in the way of interesting progress to show. I still haven’t forgotten about the 12 sweaters in a year project–although I’m a wee bit behind, technically, I only have to finish the sweaters this year. With that in mind, I hauled Sizzle out of my UFO pile.

I had a few inches left on the front, which were finished quickly, then I settled down to seam it up during the Oscars. On the principle that doing two things that always seem to take forever at once would somehow speed them both up? (Also, can we take a minute here and talk about the Oscars? There were a few great looks–Sandra Bullock, Cameron Diaz, Sandy Powell–and Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren are my role models on how to age gracefully, but what was up with the fooferah on all the skirts? It’s a dress, not sculptural art. Also, Zoe Saldana? I love you, I do, but didn’t anyone tell you that Ursula from the Little Mermaid was attacking that dress? Seriously. Take it off.)

Ahem.

I also picked up and worked the neck. It’s not overlapping quite as much as I’d thought, but is still cute. And dangerously low-cut, so that could be interesting.

And I’m still plugging along on the Atlantis sock. The problem with this is that the chart is just long enough that I can’t memorize it, or easily tell where I left off, so I can only wor on it when I have a little over an hour free, which isn’t always workable. I’m getting there, though!

I’ve been having one of those weekends that tend  to happen at the start of spring. The weather is warming up, I can turn the heat of and open up my windows, even if my toes are still freezing, and I get all sorts of inspired.

Now, if only I could get all sorts of organized and focused, things would be awesome. Instead, I jump from one project to another, unable to decide what I want to work on the most.

But, remember the mountain of fabric?

I ironed it all down into a manageable amount.

See? I told you it didn’t look that big when I started.

I tok some of the blue and tan floral and made up a little wrap skirt. I’m not wild about how the waistband turned out, but overall I think it’s great. I also grabbed some of the green and purple and one of the bunny fabrics and started making a long hippie panel skirt. I got about halfway through that before deciding to take a break….I cut all the pieces out, at least, which is the hardest part.

Both of these projects are ones I’m working without a pattern. Eventually I do want to embarc up on the use of actual patterns but honestly, it scares me a little. Oh well, nothing I can do but jump in, I suppose!

I was looking through my photos and projects on Ravelry and realized I have a few finished objects I haven’t shared with you yet! First up, Brilliant Retro. This was finished in 2009, but I waited until I went on vacation at Bass Lake to get photos. Photography is courtesy of Jenny Wilde, who is awesomely fantastic. Crappy modeling is courtsey of, well, me. Who needs to get better poses.

Ahem.

Pattern: Brilliant Retro by Teva Dunham, from the Winter 2005 Interweave Knits
Yarn: Patons Brilliant in lavender, a Christmas present from my Mom
Needles: US4 (I think, it’s been a while)
Mods: Left off the snaps and am fastening with a pin instead

I love the back detail on this. And it really does fit wonderfully.

I’m king of these rocks!

I wound up working a strange schedule this past weekend, due to some things that came up, so I ended up having half of Monday off. It’s thrown me off a little–what day is it? how many weeks have their been?–but I also took the opportunity to get some things done!

Things like washing the fabric mountain of doom. (Large Cat provided for scale.) I swear, it did not look this big when I took it down to the wash, but by the time I took it out of the dryer, it had morphed into some sort of looming mountian of future craft projects. Also, I should probably move onto the ironing stage at some point.

But then…I baked! I made a delicious Raspberry Buttermilk Cake from Smitten Kitchen for a potluck I was headed to that night.

Then while I was at it, I made a second one, plus a Lemon Yogurt Blueberry Cake, also from Smitten Kitchen, to take into work. Sadly, I did not get a chance to snap a photo before I took this in, and it was devoured before I had a chance.

This was all that was left of the raspberry cake. It turned out really fantastic, and was super quick and easy. In fact, I’m planning on making another one tonight, as I’m having a friend over for dinner and indoctrination into the wonderful world of Battlestar, Galactica.

Because you know what? There’s nothing that cheers up  a week like cake.

I feel like I should have more interesting links for y’all this week. (Assuming, of course, that anyone cares. Do you care?) But I do bring some delicious looking pasta sauce, crazy cake, sheep, and chickens. And really, what more could you want out of a rainy Wednesday morning?

October Farm has a delicious looking–and extremely involved–recipe for bolognese sauce. I’d have to shop for a ridiculous amount of ingredients and spend all day cooking, but I still kind of want to make this.

A really depressing piece from Harvard Magazine talks about the ridiculous levels of business of Harvard students, and the fact that my generation seems to be unable to do things like enjoy free time or socialize without some sort of official, scheduled activity. (Sigh.) Makes me want to spend a day making the aforementioned bolognese and knitting a tea cosy to protest.

Treehugger suggests knititng a tea cosy to save energy. I’ll take any excuse to knit! They also promote some tea cosies knit by a group in the UK (and I love that a photo of their offerings includes a Jayne hat and a Dalek tea cosy) but if you’re in the US and want to stay local, you might want to hit up Etsy.

Treehugger also offers a post on some really bizarre responses from climate change deniers. You might want a shot of whiskey before reading this. (Or maybe something even more mind-altering…perhaps it would make more sense, then?)

Arduous blog has a great, thoughtful post asking if moderation is more difficult than deprivation for Americans.

Treehugger offers some thoughts on a year with chickens. Although I still desperately want to have chickens some day, this was a good reality check.

Taelixev posted a link to this crazy awesome rainbow cake. I want to make it, and yet, I also know the process might make me cry. (Also, I don’t have enough bowls. Which would be kind of an issue.)

Ruffles and Stuff has some great photo tips for bloggers. I admit that I could be using these techinques a lot more. Sadly, she does not address the issue of how to get outside light when you’re at work during daylight hours.

It’s shearing time! Sheep Gal offers a look at the shearing process–I’ve heard some suggest shearing sheep is cruel, and I think this blog does a great job of showing that it really isn’t. I mean, I’m not saying the sheep look overly thrilled to be there, but they don’t appear overly traumatized either.

One thing I’ve noticed about tough economic times is that all sorts of folks have come out of the woodwork yelling about how we’re in this position because of a lack of “real American values” and that it’s the liberals/big government/Washington politicians who are systematically destroying this way of life. Then they go on to wax poetic about some value that, if you take a minute to scratch the surface, really only beneifts a very small portion of the American public.

Hmm. I think maybe we’re looking at the wrong values.

Or at least we’e going about them the wrong day.

Today, I was waching a piece on the news about the Postal Service. The postal service is suffering financially, due partially to things like e-mail and partially to things competing services like Fed-Ex or UPS. And so they had someone on TV talking about how of course it was, because how can the postal service be expected to care when they’re not competing against anyone, really, since they’re still guaranteed to exist.

Excuse me?

I’ve got a couple of problems at this, so I’m just going to start at the beginning and say that as a country, we’re a little to obsesed with competition. America is not a culture known for it’s ability to understand moderation (see: just about everything) and like anything else, I think it’s time to consider we’ve taken competition a bit too far. It’s not that a little healthy competition is bad–two companies with the same service can, in moderate amounts, spur one or the other to tweak their product, offer superior customer service,  and generally stay on top of their game. But that’s not the kind of competition that seems to be playing out. Instead, it’s a win-at-all-costs, anihilate the enemy competition. It’s the kind where the bottom line and driving out everyone else is the goal, and the biggest bully on the block wins.

More than that, though, it seems that we’ve forgotten an even bigger value, which is the idea of pride in doing a good job. If there’s any American value we ought to be trying to revive, it seems that one should be the biggest contender. What about the idea that the USPS will try to do a job because they want to do a good job. (Which isn’t to say that there aren’t lessons that could be taken from private industry; it is notoriously difficult to fire incompetent people or promote good ones in the Federal government and changing that would probably do a lot to help improve the performance of government agencies.) That providing a service is an important goal in and of itself? It’s strange that seems so radical, but even as I’m sitting here writing this, I’m thinking about how naive it sounds, and how I’m a little embarrassed to even be saying something that seems so simplistic.

But think about it. What if, instead of talking about competition, and doing the best so you could beat the other guy, so you could win, so you could be on top, what if we started talking about doing a good job so you could be proud of what you’d done? That you owed it to yourself? What would that look like? I don’t know about you, but if you ask me, it sounds a lot better than taking public services like the mail and turning them over to private industry. (Let’s not forget, the USPS is cheaper than Fed-Ex and UPS, and not all Americans have internet access, particularly those in lower socio-economic classes.)

Oh, and if you like getting mail? Go send a letter to someone. A real one. You’ll make them happy and show people are still using the postal service.

Is it just me, or do toe up socks look really strange when you’re turning the heel? I prefer cuff down socks, but I’ve been working from several patterns that are toe up lately, and I still find the socks look quite odd as I work the heel.

These are the Atlantis socks plugging along. I’m enjoying these, but the chart is just long enough that I don’t want to work on them unless I have an hour or so to knit. Which makes it difficult to find time! I have been good and held off on casting on for other projects though, no matter how tempting they may be. So that has to count for something…

I already have plenty of projects on the needles, but as the seasons turn to spring, it’s hard not to start dreaming about starting new projects. Add my recent steampunk interests to that, and well, you’ve got quite a recipe for startitis!

I’ve already got a couple of sewing projects I hope to work on in the next two weeks–I’ll be going on my ordination retreat in March, and I’m hoping to have a couple of skirts sewn up by then–but I’ve also been eying the new knitting magazines and thinking about what I might want to make some day.

From the new Interweave Knits, I’m actually not loving all that much. I do like the Spring Twilight Pullover by Faina Goberstein and the Tissue Cardigan by Deborah Newton.

I’m on the fence about the Handkercheif Tee by Jenna Hurry. It’s cute, but has the potential to look really fantastic or really horrible depending on one’s body type. And I’m really not sure where I fall.

Surprisingly, I found a few things in Vogue Knitting I’m really loving. Usually they’re a little too high-fashion for me but this issue has some really cute sweaters. (Though I really don’t know what’s going on with the eye makeup on the models. Are they trying to be like the Joker? Did they lose a bar fight? Back away from the eyeliner, folks.)

There’s a Flapper inspired sweater and a vest that I just adore. I’m not usually a vest person but these are fantastic!

There are also two gorgeous dresses! Lacy! Cute! And I bet you could sew up a really fantastic, brightly colored slip to wear underneath that would just be stunning.

So the only questionb ecomes…..which one do I try to knit first? They’re all so pretty, I’m not sure I can choose!

These commuter socks have been hanging around on the needles for a long, long time. I have a tendency to switch back and forth between knitting and reading on my commute, so sometmes I go for quite a while and don’t knit much. Plus, depending on when I leave, it can be impossible to get a seat. But it’s nice to have a plain project to work on without thinking too much…I took these to Pantheacon and whipped through the second sock in no time at all.

The yarn is bacon yarn from Holiday yarns. I love this yarn! It’s so nice to work with, there’s plenty in the skein so no worries of running short, and c’mon, it’s bacon.

The pattern is just a basic sock formula.

Bacon and eggs. What? If you’d knit these socks, you’d take this photo too. Don’t lie.