Abandoned

The dude took off to a conference in Chicago with the computer which means I will have to blog from work where I am ass-deep in it. My senior and junior colleagues are now long gone, making poor-you faces at me from their new desks and laughing their asses off. The good news is the evil AVP is off on a ten day holiday. The bad news is she has increased my responsibilities to 60 hours a week and refuses to discuss salary with me. The good news is I fully intend to go over her head while she is gone. In fact tomorrow. Hey, I gave her chances. And also, I have only been doing my regular jobs rather than work 60 hours a week. I think that's reasonable. Anyway, now you know why the posting has been erratic. Some days it's all I can do to sit upright at my desk and avoid weeping openly.

So anyway, no pictures til the dude returns*. Just boring old blather and whine, whine, whine from me.

*Too bad for Edgar because I've been working on his round robin. (DD, yours is next, promise!)

SBQ: The Bitch who Stitches

SBQ: How did you decide on the title of your stitching blog? Was it random, or does it have a special meaning to you or about you?

There was this wedding sampler I was stitching for my cousin, bride and groom standing at the edge of a wood surrounded by bushes. Every single stitch in those bushes was a different color. Hundreds of blended needles. I could hardly stitch for the complaining I did. I mostly got through it because a group of us stitched together semi-regularly. Whenever I took it out, they'd say, "here comes the stitch and bitch." In fact, we decided when we opened our stitching store cum bookstore cum coffee shop (no coffee in the stitching area) that we'd call it "Stitch and Bitch." This was before Debbie Stoller took the name for her own, of course.

When I imagined my blog, there were no stitching bloggers (that I had yet found) and I took as my inspiration the Knitting Curmudgeon. Like her, I hated when newbies-who-didn't-know-enough-to-realize-there-was-life-beyond_________ (aida in this case), took over interesting places. I was on rctn in nineteen-dickety-two when there were about 50 posts a week. Fifty intelligent and interesting on topic posts. Then something happened (I blame AOL and compuserve for releasing idiots the ill-prepared into the wilds of the internet). And then there were thousands of posts many of them on homeschooling, dying relatives that needed praying for, and how great Precious Moments kits were. It made me bitchier. And I thought this blogging-thing would give me a chance to unleash my ranting without having to actually read what those others were saying. So I was going to bitch...and the stitch and bitch thing came back to me. (The Knitting Curmudgeon has a lot more fortitude than I do because she continues to read those boards, at least every now and then, for fodder. I can't make myself. Who really cares if Jim-what's-his-name is stitching nude women--it's neither cute nor offensive.)

All this said, with the exception of my rants concerning Martha Beth Lewis, I actually find it hard to sustain the attitude I had set out to share. When I'm saying mean things to people I know, it's easy to know how far I can go. When I'm saying them in person to people I don't know, same thing--you stop when people recoil...or maybe just one more jab and then you stop. Out here, people are kind of thin-skinned. And it's hard to know when I've gone too far. OTOH, I'm not called the Stitch Bitch for nothing: WYSIWYG.

Recently I met people who I didn't know who also read the blog. Suddenly, I was horrified. I had said, things, and there were these people...Reading Them. And here I was talking to them. What had I said that they would remember; had I embarrassed myself? the poor dude? It's completely counterintuitive, but I like you all a whole lot better in the abstract than when you are shaking my hand. (Oh, it was a pleasure to meet you all, btw!)

If you're asking why I use a nom de blog, that's a whole other story.

Subversive Stitches

Remember back on July 28th (I looked it up) I complained about knitting being more mainstream than needlework? (To be honest, I think I complain about that more often, but we'll go with the most recent.) Subversive Cross-stitch is doing lots to change that. I love the divergence between form and function--the way that your gramma's country cross-stitch cows and bunnies are subverted by your teenage cousin's attitude. So I bought three: Happy Holidays, Go Fuck Yourself, and Bitch Bitch Bitch, which is, of course, only to be expected. Julie's work is heading to the mainstream via Target.com and Urban Outfitters. Target.com is carrying the less offensive ones, "Whatever" and "Get Lost." Urban Outfitters, however, has balls. With any luck people will begin to see that stitching doesn't have to be all cutesy-cutesy, and as one person who found out that I stitched told me, tacky. Now, if only Julie at Subversive Cross-stitch would sell patterns only; use linen; and take the designs up a notch in difficulty. Well, I had to bitch about something.

What kind of bitch am I?


Sarcasta-Bitch: Well aren't you the clever one? you
have a witty answer for everything and that's
why you've been labled as a bitch. But always
remember there's always someone out there who's
more sarcastic than you (me for example) but
keep up the good work.


What kind of bitch are you??
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