A profane rant and a tiny leap of joy

THE PROFANE RANT:
It always makes me apeshit when the price of gas goes up beyond the ability of people to, oh, afford to go to a job not near public transport in their reasonable-mileage cars, and someone starts snotting about how "You don't bitch about the price of milk or bottled water and they're even more expensive."

Of course I don't. I don't need the latter at all, and I don't need to buy 10 gallons of the former every week just to go to work.

So when I click a link about "if you use these oil-based products you are partially culpable for the BP spill" and read "sweaters, dresses, clothes" on it and I'm sitting here in second-hand all-cotton clothing, my immediate reaction is "you can back that bullshit down several notches right fucking now, mmmkay?"

( Acrylic and polyester clothing are made of oil. )

And that's before I get to the rant about how there's plenty of excellent old wood furniture and not-plastic tools out there.

THE TINY LEAP OF JOY
For once, a home improvement possibility that doesn't cost me lots of extra time and money! Long story short, the smallest sheet of linoleum I could buy for the 3 x 6 pantry was 6 x 9. Rather than spend the time and $$ refinishing (or hiring someone to refinish) the coat closet floor, I'm going to have plenty of leftover lino to put down there as well. And then I won't have to worry about the carpet cleaner leaking onto wood or the vacuum cleaner scuffing up the finish. I doubt I'm even going to glue it down; just use vinyl tape to make sure it doesn't crawl.

I have a cunning plan...

So, a couple of years ago I started kicking around the concept of writing a learn-to-knit book called $600 in Therapy and a Free Afghan. But life got in the way, as the song lyric says, and I could never get the concept to gel.

Today it solidified quite nicely. Not afghans - scarves! Scarves are portable, a traditional learning project, don't cost a lot in yarn, and an awful lot of charities are collecting scarves in particular. Plus, a shawl is just a fat scarf; a washcloth is two scarf ends; you can sew 5-7 scarves together and call them an afghan; a fat, short scarf folded over and with a strap becomes a tote, etc. Bonus: I can keep the original hook of the book that every single project be accomplished on the same set of tools and every single project be useful. (Seriously, have you EVER seen anyone with a cell phone cozy?)

Starting in November (to give me time to get the house in order but also so that people playing the home game have time to make a Christmas/Yule/Hanukkah present), I'm going to start a scarf. The idea will be to knit one a month through to 2012, giving me enough samples to start pitching the book that year.

Why am I telling you? Because I'm putting off scraping up the old linoleum in the pantry a few more minutes

1) I need a new title. (Although it's tempting to keep the original subtitle of "Knitting for the Nervous, the Newbie, and Especially the Nervous Newbie")
2) I will need test knitters. Preferably someone who has been interested in knitting, but who hasn't done much. (I doubt experienced knitters will get much out of this; in the interests of coherence, I'm only going to teach one cast on, for example.)

At the beginning of each month, I will send illustrated instructions out to my test knitters so they can knit along and give me feedback about what instructions worked and didn't.

I'm also going to need a native guide or two on Ravelry; I'm only ever going there for patterns and haven't done a lot of the social stuff.

I know it's a while until November, but I thought I'd mention it to see what the reaction is.