If you stay in one place, things may come back around.

I. Frog Patrol

Oh, who is this, perching in the break room at work?

Ever since the puffy Portland frogs came on the scene, I've been tucking little frogs around. 

Two other coworkers add toys or trinkets to their areas-- Sander (Hannukah candle-lighter--coming up soon, and I just found a small menorah!) and Book's Amina, who is a fan of anime and suchlike.

But--since Ass't Man left-- no one else adds decorations to the break room. 
I've hung framed art (donated) over the years. 
I just added a Virgin of Guadalupe--the Mexican apparition of Mary––in honor of our Catholic Hispanic coworkers (several from Mexico). 

II. What goes around, comes around (eventually, maybe), if you're there to see it

Ass't Man took up my invitation to help with end caps.
I was surprised. I thought I'd never see him again after he'd dropped in the week before. 

But he showed up this Monday, and I was delighted, and told him so. 
He has one hour on Mondays, he said, between getting off work (he's a special ed aide, like I was briefly) and picking up his daughter from some after-school activity--
enough time to decorate one end cap.

Great! I said. NO ONE does any decorating. 

And he whipped together this black-and-white display, below. 
He always mixed things from different departments--here, soccer shoes on the top shelf, and a speaker (?) on the bottom.
(I later added the Black rag-doll family in the basket. I know it throws off the color scheme.)

Ass't Man had left the store two years ago on a sour note--after I'd told him how uncomfortable I'd been with his drunken behavior toward me at a party at Emmler's. 

It had gone badly. I'd felt extremely uncomfortable, and he'd gotten defensive and turned on me:
"I have to walk on eggshells around you!"

And I'd gotten angry. "You sound like an alcoholic!"
Well, that was true
 . . . but said LOUDLY on the sales floor at work?
Not ideal.

That was pretty much our last conversation until four days ago, when he –– in passing (we were not even facing each other) ––mentioned that he's quit drinking.
He also let slip that he's been "sort of boycotting this place".

AND he said he'd be so much more effective as Assistant Manager now that he's worked in Special Ed.
I can totally imagine that!  

Before the thrift store, he'd worked in graphic design for twenty years, and never directly with people. 
He was terrible at people, but, granted, he was also inexperienced.
As anyone could see. 

(It's classic bad management that Big Boss made him manager. BB simply promotes the Last One Standing.  I'm only not a manager because I've refused it--and I doubt he'd offer it to me now.)

I am very happy––but cautious––about AM.
I had felt like I'd broken up with my store husband when he left.
But I know he has quit drinking before, and not been able to stay with it. So I'm not going to get my hopes up. 

It's great he's trying, anyway, and now we're not forced into proximity, maybe we can enjoy one hour a week.
I could take that time to work on another end cap.
But not at first.

We'll see if this even lasts, but I do feel a bit restored by even the brief chat. Him telling me he quit drinking feels like a reply to and acknowledgement of my distress two years ago.

THINGS TAKE TIME.

AND... talk about things going round--the same week AM dropped in, Manageress hired Emmler Ann back as cashier.
I'm thrilled!
She's the wild child artist who I'd made Alley Protectors with. She's also been gone two years.

 So that Monday AM helped up front, Emmler was at the cash register, and for a moment the three of us stood together, saying hi.

It's so interesting--it's by my own returning to the store that I am present for these people's. 
I am grateful.
_________________

III. Some stuff

It's cold outside. 26ºF / –3ºC this morning.
I added this record to a work display yesterday.

I miss my orange couch--the same color as the one above. I slightly regret having gotten rid of it, though it was the right thing to do when I moved into a room at HouseMate's. 
But I have my ugly brown couch  now, so I'm okay.

BELOW: 
An example of me taking advantage of my coworkers' ignorance: someone had priced a bag of these three skeins of yarn $4.99. 
I saw the malabrigo tag and snatched it up.

Malabrigo is a family-owned, hand-dyed yarn business in Uruguay, though this "Dos Tierras" blend of alpaca and merino is made in collaboration with a Peruvian place.
It's not the MOST expensive yarn--"only" $22/skein. (The Noro yarn of my stripey sweater is double that.)

Anyway, there's enough for a knitter to make something--it would be a shame to cut it up for God's eyes. So I offered it to J-shek, my writer friend who knits and had donated some leftover yarn to my eyes project. 
He was happy to accept.

BELOW: 
A new old tablecloth for Christmas Eve dinner! 
And a couple old hot pads crocheted to look like . . . brain coral. (I have a few already.) Can you see? Those wavy lines are open and elevated ridges. 

Found it! It's called Wiggle stitch, and it's enjoying a revival.
A free pattern here:
mooglyblog.com/wiggle-it-crochet-trivet-dishcloth-set

Now I've got my needlecrafters to help me, maybe I'll learn how to make these. They're so appealingly weird--and useful as trivets.

BELOW: Experimenting with technique...
My 2nd attempt to mimic the Diebenkorn painting. 
I wound a patch of asymmetrical blue and thicker lines of orange & red. 

The balance is not right. . . Needs to be chunkier.
 Will try, try again!
THINGS TAKE TIME.

New Happy Hour

I’m stopped for a happy hour beer and a yarn-ball rolling stint, a block from my house. Despite walking past it almost daily, I’ve avoided this deli and organic/local farms butcher & market because during Covid they instituted a 10% service fee. Lots of places started adding fees, but usually more like 4%—and most took them off after lockdown. 

I resented that this deli only removed theirs when the City passed a law saying places could not charge these (often hidden in small print) fees. I thought the deli was awfully snooty, catering to the Montessori trade. (There’s a Montessori school in the neighborhood. Like I’ve said, this neighborhood is on a social border. And so am I.)

But lately I’ve heard that they are strong, active supporters of immigrants—and I saw signs that they’re hosting a “What to Do in an ICE raid” training—the sort my workplace should hold. So this afternoon I decided to try it, and it’s very nice, though it smells of smoked meats… a mix of delicious and disgusting. They’re playing good music though. (Some acoustic alt-country blues kinda music?)

I despair of my workplace. I won’t go into it, but Manageress just decreed something so nonsensical, it’s like saying, “I want us to flounder in disorder.”

I absolutely am committing HERE & NOW to putting my energy into My Own Work, especially into art making & toy playing!

I’ve already started—God’s eyes, Christmas card prints, needlework group, postcards, Bear repair, reaching out to people… and gathering tiny musical instruments for the Girlettes’ Christmas parade—new this year!

And now I am going to wind up some of this beautiful yarn I just got in the mail from k. It’s wool carpet yarn—too scratchy to wear next to the skin but absolutely ideal for winding around sticks.

Why I love my job.

 I really needed a reminder and the thrift magic sent me one this morning – – I pulled these tiny, old, pipe-cleaner Christmas creatures  out of the trash at work. They were all bent and twisted, but savable. (My coworkers are criminal —the “church lady” ones, I mean.)

Color fields

 

From today: a God’s eye in colors from Richard Diebenkorn’s painting “Berkeley No. 52” (1955) —the postcard here. I continue trying to shake loose my color habits. 

MT dropped by with a book and joined me in wrapping yarn for a bit. She said she used to close her eyes and choose seven colored pencils out of the enormous number she had – – and then use only those in her next picture.

P.S. "managing sideways"

P.S. I confess to you, my brothers and sisters, 
that I have turned to ChatGPT for actual help. 

In the past, I've only talked to it about what it (AI) is, how it works, what its existence means, and the same questions applied to human beings (what are we, anyway?), and that sort of philosophical and computer-y stuff.

But now I find myself in a workplace situation I could use help with, and I thought that with its patchwork of patterns, Chat could put together something helpful.

And it did, right off the bat. It used the phrase "managing sideways" to describe what I am facing.
I won't go into it, but a coworker is not pulling their weight; I have not said anything to them because. . . among other things,
I resent management, who should do it, and never does.

I gave a brief overview, and Chat replied:

"In workplaces with weaker management, informal “managing sideways” often falls on conscientious employees. 
That doesn’t mean you have to take on more than is fair, but you can approach this in a way that’s low-conflict, professional, and safe."

I immediately felt better that what I face at work is so common (I knew it was), there's a phrase for it (one I'd never heard). It can be a good thing in a healthy workplace (mine is not).

And then it came up with a list of helpful ideas for strategizing with my coworker.  
Yay!

(Top: “Relativity” by Escher)

Flips & Tips

I. My Hair: From Caesar to Tintin
 

I got my hair buzzed short seven Saturdays ago--it's growing out. 
This week, Media Jeff (store volunteer) said it looked good–"like Caesar".

Caesar? I'd rather look like Tintin, I said, with a flip in the front.

Housewares volunteer Nina was standing nearby. She's a cosmetics enthusiast. "I'll bring you some product!" she said. 
She brought in three hair waxes and pastes for my very own. (I own zero cosmetics, not even a lipstick anymore.)
  
Yesterday I slicked back the sides and flipped up the front.
Much better!

I took this selfie in the bathroom of the French Café where Marz used to work. I went there yesterday after the Needlework meet-up at the library. (The needleworkers meet on the first and third Saturdays of the month. This was my second time.) 

II. Tips

There were about a dozen women--most of them knitters and crocheters, a couple cross-stitchers. 
Both crocheters were making amigurumi--one, a set of 12 wee figures from the Nutcracker Suite; the other, a topsy-turvy figure with a reversible flower-petal skirt. The knitters were making hats, scarves, or sweaters, from simple beginner's patterns to intricate Scandinavian ones.

I made several God's eyes (below).
I've realized that pencils (slippery and six-sided) don't hold yarn in a straight line, so you end up with a circle instead of a diamond. 
Now I realize that, I'll start using that feature on purpose. Flower colors with leaf-greens behind.
The center eye on pencils looks like a rose. 

The one on the far right looks kinda... fleshy, like labia, doesn't it? I'll try to play that up more.

I'm starting to take time to add decorations again, like the felt baubles on the blues-and-white Greek eye above.  (I'd stopped doing that when I'd wanted to make 100 eyes fast.)
I made this one at the French café. 

At the group, a knitter had asked me if she could have the Greek eye that I'd made there. She wants to hang it at her workplace-- in food service at a tough grade school. Since the school outlawed phone use this year, she said, there've been more student fights in the cafeteria.
I don't know if she feels the need for protection from school staff or the kids!

I'm happy when people want the eyes. Since she'd wanted one, I left the second Greek eye at the café as a tip, with a tiny note saying what it was.

You don't have to tip––it's bar service––but I usually do put something in the tip jar (though I know the mostly young women who work there earn more than I do). 

(Tipping is weird. The more upscale the place, the more servers make, while working in the grungiest food service--fast food--servers make NO tips.)

Anyway, lately I've started to cut back on tipping because prices are so high--and most places charge a dollar extra for non-dairy (plant) milk, oat, soy, or almond. 

I'd paid $7 for an oat-milk cappuccino.

I don't like that upcharge.
I think places should encourage dairy-free milk for health and sustainability reasons--and kindness to cows, too--and spread the expense out so everyone pays the same, no matter which milk they choose.

(Like, places don't charge more if a customer uses the bathroom...)

III. Choose Your Milk

Starbucks stopped upcharging for vegan milks last fall--as a sales incentive, and also because of pressure from animal rights groups. (per PETA). 
I'd hoped more places would follow their lead.

Some have. The manager at a café that did told me the milk industry makes dairy super cheap for them, and non-dairy milks cost a lot more. "But you don't have to pay for refrigeration." 

"And it's good for the cows", I said.

There's a coffee shop here that makes non-dairy milk the default--I love that!

I'd made an effort to eat less animal products a couple years ago, after I got some wonky kidney readings.
Now I'm just finding I don't want to eat them--especially flesh. 
Cheese, I still love. 

A wealthy friend of the thrift store (I don't know who) is hosting a thank-you dinner for staff next weekend. 
We were asked to choose an entrée from the menu ahead of time. Everyone was choosing salmon, and I was going to too--and then I thought about how salmon are farmed. It's disgusting. 

But--how nice––they offer vegan bolognese. So I chose that, and will bring a little baggie of Parmesan cheese to sprinkle on top.

IV. Postcard Exchange

One of the needleworkers, Juno, a trans-woman, brought a photo album of postcards she's received through an international postcard-swap, 
PostCrossing.com. (Also on IG.)

[Btw, I use pseudonyms or nicknames for most people on my blog.]

This online organization has facilitated people sending and receiving  80 million postcards since 2005. 
I thought it'd be boring to look at someone's postcard album, but a lot of the senders had put creative care into their mailings, with lots of fun stamps and some wild postcards.

Juno said that she'd listed LGBTQ+ in her profile, and that some people try to send stuff that matches profiles. So she gets a lot of fun queer-themed cards, including a card from Finland with that country's OFFICIAL Tom of Finland postage stamps

Another needleworker, Christine, had signed onto Postcrossings recently because of Juno.
And another woman passed around instructions she'd printed for knitting washcloths--"the easiest thing to learn to knit on".

I love all this physical sharing! 
I don't want to learn to knit, but this sort of thing is exactly what I wanted in a seeking out live get-togethers---the physical presence of other people leading to exchanges of collateral tidbits. 

And I do want to exchange postcards. I have lots sitting around, and some fun stamps. And some cool postcards get donated to the store too.
Christine and I exchanged addresses for a direct swap, and I think I'll sign up at postcrossings too.
________________________

V. "Better to do it"

For the time being, I'm giving up on visiting churches. 
Tooooo many things have to line up for me to fit with a church. Hardly anything has to line up for a crafting group to work.
Not even crafting itself!
Yesterday, one woman confessed that she doesn't really do needlework, she just brings something to work on so she can socialize.

No one has started a political discussion, though sometimes there's some mention... "He's a Trumper", said disparagingly. 
There's no group recital of a Land Acknowledgement. The library that hosts the group shares our county's Land & Water Acknowledgement, and it has active programs about/with indigenous people--with offerings this month, Native American Heritage Month.

You know I'm not a particular fan of Land Acknowledgements. 
I'm only mentioning it because I'd thought the church I visited was hypocritical in reciting a strongly worded one while doing nothing (so far as I could see).

OMG, here's a hilarious mock-up of these acknowledgements from Reservation Dogs--even our ancestors the Dinosaur Nation get acknowledged.
(I love that! But... WHAT ABOUT Conifers & Ferns?!)
The characters only tolerate it because they are getting gift cards for attending.


I'd loved that show but had forgotten that scene. 
I came across it in an NPR article from 2023, So you began your event with an Indigenous land acknowledgment. Now what?

 "Indigenous leaders and activists have mixed feelings about land acknowledgments. While some say they are a waste of time, others are working to make the well-meaning but often empty speeches more useful."

I have so many questions though. 
When this church, for instance, recited its strong statement about indigenous people, I wondered,
 . . . What about ALL the other people our ancestors oppressed?
And what about the oppression of those ancestors themselves?

Should the men stand and say, 
"Our ancestors have sexually and socially exploited women"? 

Should women say, "Throughout history, we've emotionally manipulated our children and partners"?

But... this is so specific.
 Ridiculously specific.
Our ancestors weren't all one sex or race or nation... or even species.
Dinosaur Nation!

In the end, I like the Catholic Confiteor (I acknowledge...).
It's a one-size-fits-all confession of personal [fill in the blank] failure. 
I acknowledge that the church has hurt many people, 
but to me, this is not a crushing statement, but an uplifting one:

I fuck up. We all fuck up. 
WE ARE IN THIS TOGETHER.
Let us help one another.

There are various translations--this is how I remember it:

"I confess to almighty God and to you my brothers and sisters that I have sinned through my own fault, 
in my thoughts and in my deeds, 
in what I have done and what I have failed to do.

Therefore I ask you, my brothers and sisters, and all the angels and saints in heaven to pray for me to the lord our God."

I especially like that kicker, "What I have failed to do".
________________

Finally--did you see? This week the new pope, Leo, oversaw the Vatican's return of 62 indigenous artifacts to Canada. 
The previous pope, Francis, had supported the move.

"Francis said he was in favor of returning the items and others in the Vatican collection on a case-by-case basis, saying: 
'In the case where you can return things, where it's necessary to make a gesture, better to do it.'"

--npr.org/2025/11/15/nx-s1-5609835/vatican-pope-returns-indigenous-artifacts-canada

I like that.  Need to do it?  Want to do it?
Better to do it.

Oh! Ha, I just looked up from the kitchen table where I’m typing – – of course I like that– – Girlette Spike already said it—

“nothing for it but to do it”.

(I’ve posted this before—it (a gouache painting) is one of my favorite things I’ve made. It's from a photo Marz took of Spike sitting in an old truck's wheel-well on a goat farm in New Mexico.)

Keep going; Add more

Have you noticed, sometimes if an art/craft piece isn’t working out, it helps to keep going—to add more? More of some thing. If you don’t like it, you have nothing much to lose by trying.

I did not like this ^ God’s eye I made this morning. So on that theory, I added felt baubles that I’d gotten from the store – – and that bit of frivolry lightened it up. Plus, I realized it matches the autumn grasses and fading flowers in the city–planted boulevard outside my window.

With writing, however, it’s often the opposite – – it may help to take stuff out. Not as easy to edit yarn, which is more like writing by hand.

Tins

I nabbed these Carl Larsson cookie tins for MsChocolate (of Swedish descent). They are “vintage”— from the 1980s, which doesn’t seem old  to me. But to my coworker born in 2004, they must seem antique. 

They held pepparkakor—Swedish ginger thins. (More about those cookies.)

I love Carl Larsson’s art. I’d have priced these tins more than 99 cents each, but since I benefited from a coworker’s decision, I’m not complaining. Our prices are bizarre—someone will price cloudy old plastic containers $2.99, and then these lovely tins one-third of that. I try and catch such errors but lots gets by.

 I don’t mind people pricing things too low – –  then shoppers get a deal – – and sometimes that shopper is me – – it’s more a problem when people price stuff too high. Ah well, not that important. 

Big Boss said nothing about my email requesting shopping baskets. It’s entirely possible that he’ll go ahead and order them and simply never tell me – – and one day they’ll turn up. And it’s also possible he will ignore my request. Either way, I’ve decided that’s the last time I’m going to put myself out like that. I’m choosing not to set myself up to be disregarded—his usual m.o. (not just to me).

If I’m going to be annoyed or agitated, I’d rather it be for something more worthwhile! For instance, sharing my artwork more widely—like, making and selling prints, as Joanne, blogger of Cup on the Bus, had advised me to do last year. That means facing fears I have about being public with things I make.

 I’m not sure why that frightens me. If I did it, I’d probably find out! 

Fire & Eyes

Sometimes the best things are accidental. In this case--the top of my pine cone looks like the Hebrew letter Shin.
 Shaped like three tongues of flame, it is a letter of fire and transformation. 

And the winged seeds look like eyes-- like a on dragon kite.
Fire & Eyes!

I know the letter Shin because Leonard Nimoy used it for Mr. Spock's "live long and prosper" hand sign--from his growing up seeing it used as a priestly blessing in synagogue, to represent Shaddai (God) and Shalom (peace).

I need to buy some real linoleum. I've been using this soft-cut rubber stuff, and it's too pliable--you can't carve crisp, fine details. But I'll use up what I have.

Easy Day

An old friend took me to a new café in my neighborhood – – there hasn’t been one I’ve liked within walking distance – – until now!

Nice and sunny—good light for making little things from yarn. Not cheap, but nowhere is. A cup of brewed coffee is $4.25, but that includes tax & tip, so that’s not bad. Lattes are $7.25. 

Brewed it is!

Pastry prices? 

Best to eat at home first.

I spread out the God’s eyes I’d made to take their photo, and a young woman came over and asked me what they were. I told her, and I said she could have one if she wanted. 

She hesitated, so I said, “Please don’t feel you have to take one.” 

And she said, “No, I really want one! I was just deciding.”

(I always feel awkward offering people something – – I don’t want them to feel they have to accept out of politeness. A neurotic thing to worry about. 🙄😆)