November 17, 18

 Good sunny mid-November day. Had a couple of errands this morning. Most intended to take us over next week and avoid the holiday shopping. But needed to go to Michaels for some solid color balls of crochet thread and a new winter wreath. I decided that I am not going to make any more wreaths. That has become more of a chore than a pleasure and I can do without it.

18**********************************************

Cloudy today with rain continuing, perhaps, for the next three or four. This is the time of the year when sunny conditions can be more of an irritant because the angle of the sun reflects off the table under the windows right into my eyes. That will happen again six months from now. Got the crochet thread and noticed how restricted the selections were. Almost all of it was in size 10. Luckily that matches most of the partials I have. But I found two old balls of size 30. I don't remember exactly when I got them but I guess they are more than 25 years old. I am planning on paring them with another thread for some project as yet undecided. Michaels used to have an 8 foot section of racks with threads sized from 3 through 30. Not any more. I have watched as the selections of materials for needlework has contracted. I gave up on needlepoint kits when the fashion shifted to long stitch which I hated at first sight. I remember when I began doing embroidery 60 years ago (when I was in my middle teens) I could walk into the local Ben Franklin Five and Dime (or any one of other such stores) and see full aisles of pre-stamped pieces from doilies to table cloths. And any kind of knitting and crocheting threads and yarns from lace weight to bulky. Again, no more. Mom and I have commented with sad amusement that no one sewed or did other needle crafts any more. Thankfully some do and I follow a number of crafting groups on Facebook and some of the work I see is incredible.

Major irritation over the last few days: pundits talking about Michelle Obama's comments about women in politics. She basically said that we, as a society, have a lot of growing up to do before we, again as a society, will elect a woman. A couple of the pundits tried to blame the female candidates who ran because they were "flawed." Exactly what flaws they exhibited the pundits didn't specify. Frankly that notion pisses me off. How many "flawed" male candidates have occupied the White House? UH--how about 47? And the most flawed is the current occupant who managed to be elected twice. It occurs to me that male plumbing makes up for any amount of character deficiencies in a man. And female plumbing erases any number of good qualities in a woman.

Random thought: it is interesting to see people like Marjory Taylor Green fighting with Donald Trump about what and who is MAGA. Some time ago, during Trump 1.0, some MAGA voters were claiming that MAGA wasn't Trump's creation or property. He managed to put a catchy title on MAGA and express a lot of the values of the "movement." But he wasn't inseparable from MAGA. Now some of the MAGA-verse is considering a divorce most explicitly over the Epstein scandal. The disillusionment may go deeper yet.