I was coming home from work this afternoon, and as I was pulling up to my building in the apartment complex I live in, I thought, “Oh, they’ve put in some new bushes.” It seemed strange to me that they’d do this in the middle of winter, but then again, it’s not like we’ve had the most arctic of winters here this year, so who was I to judge? Then, upon closer inspection, I realized that the bushes didn’t look so hot. On closer inspection yet, I realized they weren’t bushes at all - they were last year’s Christmas trees dumped off on the side of the road.

 

Really, it’s was kind of depressing to see all those Christmas trees in various states of death just lying there, all sad and forgotten. It reminds me of this Peter Spier picture book I used to read every Christmas when I was a kid, where all the excitement at the end of the holiday just kind of dies down, and everyone goes on with their normal lives. The tree’s put out on the curb, the wrapping paper is all crumpled up in the trash, and the only evidence that the house was only a week ago decked out in full holiday spirit is the stray glass ball ornament that the cat has found lying behind the couch.

I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to keep up with my LiveJournal and keep this blog strictly fiber-related, or just ditch the LJ and do all my blogging here. Really, there are a decent number of pros and cons either way. On one hand, this is “Manning Knits - a mother-daughter knitting blog.” Not a “mother writes about knitting and daughter rants about dead Christmas trees on the side of the road” blog. But on the other hand, when I’m inspired to write, it’s usually about knitting as well as some other stuff, and I’d rather not stop the train of thought to wrap up one blog’s entry so that I can sashay over to the other blog to finish up my writing. I would imagine that it would read more cohesively if it were all wrapped up into one train-of-thought entry. But on the other (third?) hand (god, wouldn’t three hands be wonderful for knitting? Imagine how easy cabling would be if you had three hands!), do people really want to read about my mundane every-day life stuff? Well, we’ll see. I think for now, though, MK is in and LJ is out.

I’ve sadly got no new knitting pictures to share today. I’ve started working on the second of Eva’s Purple-Finger Gloves, and I’m hoping that I’ll finish by the end of the week. This is my week for finishing up loose ends, project-wise. I’ve got sweaters to knit, people! And I won’t allow myself to start any new projects before I wrap up some of the ones I’ve got going already.

So, in lieu of knitting pictures, I give you Gambit and Semour, the laziest cats on earth: