PSA's

The location for recycling prescription bottles is here in Ohio, a little south of me, in Dover, Ohio. Dover is a bucolic little town, so typical of the Connecticut Western Reserve (though the Reserve may not have extended to what became Tuscarawas County).

For due diligence, I googled "recycle prescription bottles", in the event there are more around the country. Only the Tuscarawas service was returned. It is through the Matthew 25 Ministries. That is the pill bottle address. Here is the site of the ministry: https://m25m.org/

They accept over the counter plastic bottles, too. Aspirin, supplements, all those pesky bottles that I'm sure are not recycled. 

Moving right along, here are the roll brim hat instructions. I have not found out how to get pictures back into the instructions. The yarn is wool, worsted weight (4 ply), but any worsted weight will do.

ROLL BRIM HAT

The pattern is for adult small, medium and large.  The top of the hat is decreased in six sections, or gores, which produces a very attractive swirl.  This kind of decreasing is a simple formula.  The number of gores must divide evenly into the original number of stitches.  When decreasing, knit together the last two stitches in the gore.  It can be helpful to place markers.  At the end of the pattern I have included number of stitches to cast on and the number of stitches in the gore sections to make the hat for infants and children.

 To fit sizes:  Small (20”), Medium (21 ¼”), Large (22 ½”).  These sizes are fairly nominal; if the hat is knit in wool, which is very forgiving, a small will also fit a medium.

 Materials:  1 skein, 110 yards, Ewe Tree DK to Worsted weight

16” circular #6, 1 set #6 DP needles

 Gauge:  4.5 sts = 1”

 Instructions:

With 16” circular needle, cast on 90 (96, 102)sts.  Join.  Place marker for beginning of round.

Work in stockinette stitch (knit every round) for 6”.

Decrease top as follows:  (if necessary, place a marker after every decrease to denote gore section)

 Round 1: K13(14, 15), K2tog.  Repeat to end.

Round 2: K

Round 3: K12(13,14), K2tog.  Repeat to end.

Round 4:  K

Round 5: K11(12,13), K2tog.  Repeat to end.

Round 6:  K

 Continue in this manner until 48 sts remain, then decrease every round until 6 sts remain.  Break yarn, draw through the 6 sts, pull to inside through the center top.  Work in ends.

 To make this hat in smaller sizes:

                                                Infant              3 to 6 years      7 to 10 years    11 to 15 years

 

Cast on                                    66                    72                    78                    84

 Knit 5 to 6 inches

 Stitches in gore                       9                     10                    11                    12       

 

And another thing...

I'm still on Facebook and Instagram. I tried to make a Bluesky account, but messed it up so completely I can no longer access it. Maybe I'll straighten that out some day. We all seem to hang out on Facebook and Instagram. So what the heck.

Except of course, all those ads, across several platforms, just because I looked up something. Or bought something. I bought a new bra recently and everywhere I go now, an ad for that bra that I already bought.

Recently a gratuitous clip from Jon Stewart popped up, featuring John Oliver on data mining and an address for his site about social media regulation. The website is How to change your Meta settings.

I do not find programs "intuitive". I have wasted near an hour trying to figure out screen shots, but that obviously needs to be done on my own time. I can make links, so there you go. It tells you how to stop Meta from feeding ads based on data collection, how to stop Meta from using data to help advertisers target you on other apps and how to unlink your account from your data that other companies give to Meta.

So, that's my public service announcement for today. The YouTubers call them PSA's and a popular one going around now is called "I was today years old when I learned!" and goes on to tell us something we learned fifty or sixty years ago. However, my daughter sent me one recently and it was new.

She collects old prescription bottles and sends them to a charity that provides them to hospitals in Africa, where prescription bottles are hard to come by. However, the labels must come off first. That's a job I hate, so I pass mine along to her, label intact. Here's what she learned:

Put the bottle in the freezer. I forget how long; let's say overnight. Next day, roll your finger or thumb over one corner to lift the edge, then pull off the label, easy peazy, as they say.

Since I will be putting some time into learning screen shots, I think I'll tackle another housekeeping job. Sort of like getting the genealogy in order for the children (I've done that.). When searching for the pictures I used to take of my knitting projects I found most of them are only printed on the instructions I used to write up. The original pictures are on thumb drives stashed in a basket. My kids can go through them if they want, like I went through all those census records.

The problem with the instruction sheets I made, they are in long defunct programs like WordStar or Publisher. I'd like to convert them to something accessible now. There are patterns for sweaters (mostly children's), mittens, gloves, hats, ponchos. Imagine a pair of gloves in two afternoons. If I do this, anyone interested? I'll put them in a post. 

Be the resistance

I've struggled these last months. Even lost my mojo. Seriously, I've woven less than a dishtowel over so many weeks they've become months.  

Some time ago I read Ellen's call to action. The national 24 hour Economic Blackout on February 28th:

I will participate.

The 24 hour Economic Blackout

As our first initial act, we turn it off.

For one day we show them who really holds the power.

WHEN:

Friday February 28th from

12:00 AM to 11:59 PM

WHAT NOT TO DO:

Do not make any purchases

Do not shop online, or in-store

No Amazon, No Walmart, No Best Buy

Nowhere!

Do not spend money on:

Fast Food

Gas

Major Retailers

Do not use Credit or Debit Cards for non essential spending

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Only buy essentials of absolutely necessary

(Food, Medicine, Emergency Supplies)

If you must spend, ONLY support small, local businesses.

SPREAD THE MESSAGE

Talk about it, post about it, and document your actions that day!

WHY THIS MATTERS!

~ Corporations and banks only care about their bottom line.

~ If we disrupt the economy for just ONE day, it sends a powerful message.

~ If they don't listen (they wont) we make the next blackout longer (We will)

This is our first action.

This is how we make history.

February 28th

The 24 Hour Economic Black Out Begins.

A day of rage will be cathartic, and I'm looking forward. And then, thinking backward, I thought of the boycotts I've been part of in my lifetime, and many I've not. I wasn't there for the Montgomery bus boycott, but I have participated in many consumer boycotts.

Remember supporting the United Farm Workers by boycotting produce? Grapes and lettuce. Other movements we helped as we could. The ending of apartheid. Greenpeace. Heinz. More I can no longer remember. The National School Walkout. (Another damn cold day!)

Here's a list purportedly posted by Heather Cox Richardson, but actually by the Heather Cox Richardson Community. You can find it on Facebook, if you still have an account.

It's a list of Project 2025 adherents. It doesn't include the big guys, like Amazon and Tesla; it's the minor players, who equally do not deserve our support. Use Ctrl+ to enlarge the print, if necessary.

This list is published by democratsabroad.org, a good place to look for resistance efforts. Sadly, about half our country could be on this list, which seemingly halves our available world. Or not.

Most of us are no longer raising children, managing households. We still control our purse strings and can make informed purchasing decisions. Research products before you purchase. Purchase locally. Use renewables and reuseables. I gave up most paper products years ago. Buy handkerchiefs. Buy kitchen towels. Be thoughtful about cleaning products.

Be vocal. Don't buy a Tesla, but also don't boo the Canadian national anthem. And don't begrudge them the opportunity to vocalize their displeasure with our government. That's all.

Anamneses

I can scarcely pronounce that title. It refers to a memory, probably of another lifetime. This is about such a memory; I am now so far removed from most of my past, it seems like another life time.

For many years I was a prolific knitter; the art I learned from my mother. I started in college, age 18, and truly stopped only a couple years ago, when I bequeathed the last of my yarn, all my patterns and needle stash to Caroline, the last grandchild.

Even before Jan and I left our "civilian" jobs to form a weaving studio, I was waist deep in yarn. Basically I had come to dislike most synthetic yarns available in the seventies and not able to afford the beautiful wools out there.

What to do? Make it yourself, I concluded. I bought a wheel and figured it out. Actually, I bought several wheels before I settled on my favorite, a wheel made by a weaving friend's son-in-law. Beside being a practical tool, it was a woodworking bit of art. This is the only picture I can find of me and that wheel, spinning at a show in Boston.

After we ended our weaving careers in 2003 Jan and I took separate artistic directions. She became an accomplished and acclaimed quilter and I became a dabbler, a dilettante. There were pounds and pounds of carded wool in the studio that needed spun, a neat task while watching TV. So, I spun and spun.

What to do with the yarn, except knit it. So, I knit it and sold the garments in a local gallery. 

But I could spin faster than knit, so why not sell it! I explained what an electric wheel would look like to my brother Walt, and he made one. Here's a picture of it.

You can see the bobbin with some yarn in the middle and the unit around it is called the flyer. It distributes the spun yarn onto the bobbin. A typical flyer uses hooks to distribute the yarn along; you must stop the wheel and move the yarn to the next hook. 

This flyer had something I discovered shortly after I began spinning, a travelling screw. A continuous screw in that black tube carried the yarn constantly. I'm notorious for cutting to the chase and it took me no time to find a fellow who made travelling flyers.

My wholesale yarn business was off to a great start with the addition of Walt's electric wheel, comprised of parts from my old mechanical wheels and a sewing machine motor. I sold to knitting shops all over Ohio and Wisconsin.

That is the whole lead-in to my anamneses moment today. Beth had asked to come visit and at once sat us down and opened her tablet (the electronic one). Pretty soon we were on a face time (I think that's the name) with Caroline, who had a mystery box from her mother to open.

Out came two great bundles of yarn.

"OMG, that's my old label!"

Beth is a great fan of Facebook Marketplace and one day, unsolicited, this yarn for sale came up. Probably because she occasionally searched for yarn. I suspect it came from a yarn shop in Columbus. The owner was so delightful I even shared my Aran Aran pattern with her. If I can find a picture, I'll post it.

So Caroline has enough yarn to make a lovely sweater. It's in good hands.

I made and sold yarn for about a year. Then we took in three grandchildren. They take up a lot of room, and the wheels had to find a new home. I sold them all, in one fell swoop.

No direction home

Beth and I went to see A Complete Unknown this afternoon. I won't lie, this was me in the sixties and later. I teared up several times, but didn't need a tissue. I remembered my twenties (and my motorcycle, for some levity).

More than once lately I have wondered, "Where are the kids?" Why aren't they in the streets, blocking traffic, holding up signs, chanting? But I've come to terms with some of it now. 

Back then, we didn't affect change. We didn't effect change. It ground along at it's own pace, swelled occasionally by the undercurrents of the time.

That war in Vietnam lasted almost fifteen years, and that was just for us. The French and the Russians had their go for years before that. When I started college in 1961, Kennedy had just sent some advisors. My own children were in school when it ended.

All those students who protested the Gaza war, Columbia, George Washington, California, Ohio State, are looking at passport revocation or worse. As are their parents. At least four of them did not wind up lifeless on a Kent State campus.

When I protested the bombing of Cambodia, wrote letters, joined protest groups at CWRU, the worst that happened was the IRS audited my puny twenty grand tax return. The stakes are far higher this time. 

It has been this bad in the past, and cycles around to the next spate of badness. When my grandparents were starting out, there was war, there was poverty, there were oligarchs in charge. Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan and Gould controlled supply chains and wages. Men and women organized and fought and died for rights that were gradually built into the law. 

We all know the history. The depression, the fight for rights, the fight for the future of the world. Next the triumph of the middle class, the rise of the unions. Love them or hate them, unions made regular citizens of millions of people in this country who could own homes and send children to school, not to the factories at ten years old.

And here we are back to dark days again. It didn't need to happen. 

I fear we will stumble in this wilderness long past my life time to sort the current idiocracy. There has been violence for no good cause. Capital police were injured and died four years ago. The men (and women) deluded to think bullets trumped ballots are up for the next round. There is plenty of mental and physical violence to come.

It's just so stupid to do it over and over and over. 

I can't fix it. I can only work against it. My grandma used to say "Pull up your corset strings girls, we have work to do."

I see much of northeastern Ohio has ordered ICE not to enter safe places (schools, churches, designated areas) without a search warrant, and they cannot carry guns. It's just a middle finger, but an excellent start.