I wish I had thought of that!!

Reading through the latest Interweave Crochet (more about that magazine later), I came upon one of those simply stunning artists, those who give you the "I wish I had thought of that" moment.

This time it is Elaine Bradford, a crochet artist. The image in the article was of a taxidermied squirrel that had been crocheted a mod sweater, including face mask. It is genius. I went to her web site and could not find that exact picture on the web, which is too bad, but here are some others.

Here, she crocheted sweaters for every item in her refrigerator.

Here she crocheted sweaters for rocks.

Also on her web page are some crocheted sleeves for taxidermied deer hooves. That made me laugh because we once stayed in a cabin up north and they had deer hooves (bent to right angle) as coat hooks. It was horrifying to see deer parts just sticking out of the wall, but now I wish I had been able to crochet them some sleeves. That would have been funny "guerilla" art for the cabin owners, coming home to see their animal parts lovingly warmed through fiber.

But, now that she has done it, it takes away a bit from the rest of us. I mean, being the second person to crochet a sweater for a taxidermied squirrel is just lame.

Has it been that long?

Oof, how many days without a post. I must say, now that my job is all computer all the time, my enthusiasm for all things Internet has cooled considerably. Let's catalog the online activities.

1. Local forum. Was reading that for years, posted for years, then stopped posting about 9 months ago, now I barely read it.

2. Blog surfing. Don't really do that anymore either. Sorry, Althouse.

3. Family blog. Still going.

4. This blog. Hanging in there.

5. Facebook. Yes I have an account, I had one friend for a while, even though I told her I didn't use it much. I got it to check out my students on the web while I was teaching. Another friend had told me his students talked about him on Facebook, so I wanted to check. I didn't see anything. Now, a second friend has "friended me" or whatever on Facebook, and I may have to respond.

6. Ravelry. I signed up and I think I have already forgotten my password. I hope I wrote it down somewhere.

7. Email. I have my work account, my Google account for Blogger, and my Yahoo account for Flickr.

8. Flickr. I was putting up lots of photos for a while, but that too has slowed.

9. LinkedIn. My 25th high school reunion is approaching and the organizers want us to create a profile at LinkedIn. I hadn't even ever heard of it. I think it is a version of Facebook, maybe?

So, as you can see, it is a bit much. I should decide which to keep up and which not to. The web is just too much some times.

Run to the library, now!

Go check out A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini. I read it today, as part of my two-day vacation, and I cried.

It is about two women in Afghanistan from the 70s to the present. I looked at a couple of reviews, and while they slammed Mr Hosseini for writing "fiction" not "literature," they generally liked it, since it is such a gripping story.

I had read parts of several other books about that region. I read part of Lipstick Jihad, about a twenty-something Iranian-American woman who is a journalist in Tehran. Too hipsterish for me. I tried reading Reading Lolita in Tehran, but it was too pretentious and self serving. I did read Kabul Beauty School and found it entertaining and educational. I later found from the web that there is some controversy over that last one, the author wrote it as a memoir of her time in Kabul, setting up a beauty school. Apparently, she may have embellished, or told the story selectively, or something.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is fiction, but it feels like real life. It is so gripping and emotional, and you know that thousands of people in real life Afghanistan have had the horrific life experiences that the characters in the book have had. It made me cry to think of their hardships.

Then I went for a walk with my dog, and felt the obscene-ness of my middle class American existence. My dog probably has a more comfortable life than many people in impoverished places around the world do. Afghanistan has experienced a coup, a Soviet invasion, regional fighting by the Mujahideen, takeover by the Taliban, and invasion by the Americans, all within the last thirty years. There are millions of Afghani refugees living in Pakistan and elsewhere, most of the country is very poor, and according to wikipedia, they are experiencing severe environmental stresses, including drought and deforestation.

Sometimes my husband claims that our country is going to hell, that the Bush regime is a dictatorship, etc etc. This book will give him perspective. A country going to hell is one in which people are starving to death, one in which 70% of the forest have been cut down in a generation, one in which there is no clean water for drinking or electricity on a regular basis. A dictatorship is a regime where you could get your hand cut off for stealing, where women are not allowed to go out in public without a man accompanying them, where TV and music are forbidden.

Now, go read that book!