Sheryl No.

I've thought long and hard about whether to write this. I don't want to send out any unnecessary negativity into the world, where there is plenty already. I have nothing against Sheryl Crow as a person. She went through a very public break-up, she battled breast cancer for God's sake, she adopted a baby, she does good work for charity. I give her a lot of credit for how she lives her life. I cannot, however, give her a lot of credit for her music. I decided I had to write about this because at times I feel I am the only person on the planet who has not fallen under the Sheryl spell. Granted, I have not listened to her new record in its entirety yet, but what I've heard - dare I say it - I don't like.

She's being given all kinds of credit for this "stripped down," "raw" song she plays as the album opener, called "God Bless This Mess." It's just her and her acoustic guitar and it's supposed to be all political and passionately anti-war. It has lyrics like, "My brother came home yesterday / From somewhere far away / He doesn't look like I remember / As he just stares off into space / He must have seen some ugly things / He cannot seem to say." Ok. To me, this comes off like high school notebook poetry. And when you listen to the song, it sounds like the first song Dar Williams ever wrote in 10th grade. She's trying to go for sort of a spare bluegrass feel; what may feel original to a pop singer comes off amateur to the listener. A bluegrass singer/songwriter she ain't. Then there's another song, "Love is Free," which I have a really hard time swallowing. Coming from a person who has purchased the most idyllic comfortable life imaginable on a huge beautiful rural ranch with dozens of horses and acres of solitude (do I sound jealous? I am), it's difficult to listen to lines that are supposed to be from the perspective of someone devastated by Hurricane Katrina: "Greasy fingers in your jelly jar / They jack your money while you sleep in your car ... Devil take your money / Money got no hold on me / Everybody making love 'cause love is free." Doesn't bowl me over with its sincerity.

Blender gave her only 2.5 stars, which I was relieved to see, but they went on to basically say that she just aims too low and "camouflages her leftist ideas," "hoping the red-staters won't notice she's gone pink." I don't think she was just aiming low and softening her message because she thinks people can't take her radical ideas. This isn't exactly radical stuff. I don't think she's capable of more political depth. I think that high school poetry was about as deep as she gets and, frankly, it's lame. She was great fun back in the '90's singing about how all she wanted to do was have some fun, and wondering whether some guy was strong enough to be her man. I think she should stick with that. Some publication compared her to Tom Petty as being a critically unassailable yet unwaveringly successful pop artist. Why does she deserve this crown? Just because she plays an instrument and writes her own songs? I think that's setting the bar kind of low.

Offensive to the ear? No. Deserving of universal critical adoration? Heck no.

Props given.

I would be amiss if I did not acknowledge the source of my blogging inspiration. My amazing friend Liz is like the Timbaland of blogging. She is just at the top of her game. My husband lists her among his top 3 heroes and aspires to build a successful online business from scratch like she has. She is sassy and hilarious and you will adore her.

The Daily Stroll
Because I Said So

Marsupial tote.

For my second-ever blog post, I will be discussing knitting. Feel free to tune out at this point if this bores you. I have recently gotten into this lovely winter hobby and am proud of my little projects. First thing I did was knit a scarf for my husband Ben. It was the easiest thing you could make - just garter stitch, which is knitting rows back and forth over and over - but I did use an interesting variegated yarn so that it came out in shades of black, brown, and gray. Incredibly, Ben wears it constantly. I will have to put up a picture of him wearing it - rarely is he caught without it. He refers to it in a faux Scottish accent as "me scarrrrrf."

Project #2 was from the great book "Stitch 'n Bitch," and it is called Meema's Felted Marsupial Tote. This bag looked easy enough, but it turned out a little more challenging than I thought it would be. I thought I would put up my notes in case anyone out there happens to Google the pattern and wants to make it like I did, because I strayed from the book's pattern.

If you want it to look like it does in the book's picture, be warned - IT WILL BE TINY. The book's pattern makes it come out like a little handbag. I started it, saw how tiny it was coming out, and ripped it out and started over. I wanted a good-sized tote bag, so I changed the size. The other odd thing is that even though the pattern is small, they tell you to buy way too much yarn for even a much bigger bag. I only used 2 skeins of orange, and 1 skein plus about 18 yards of pink. You start out by making the bottom of the tote first, and they tell you to cast on 16 stitches and knit 44 rows. I figured I would try to make the bag about 25% bigger, so I casted on 20 stitches and knitted 54 rows. (Are "casted" and "knitted" the proper past tense? Anyway.) So then after that, you pick up stitches and start knitting in the round to make the bag. I did 32 rows in orange, and 26 rows in pink.

Another thing to watch out for is the tricky "right twist" stitch. I searched online to find better directions for it because the ones in the book didn't quite work for me. In my own words, which may work only for me: look at the next two stitches on your left needle. Knit the SECOND one, without slipping anything off the left needle, and then knit the first one. You will feel all twisted up - this is good. You will end up with your right needle positioned between the first and second stitches. Now - slip BOTH off the left needle. It feels like you're dropping a stitch, but you're not! Go ahead and count them, you're fine! Easy as that.

Here are my results. In tooling around online I noticed that most people who've done this project used different colors and yarns, but the radiant colors of this project were what drew me to it in the first place!

This is the finished product, pre-felting:


I then stuck it in the washing machine with some detergent (scary!) and let it go a full 10-minute cycle in very hot water, including spin cycle. I took it out and put a small cardboard box inside it for shaping, and let it air dry.

Final results:



Good luck with this pattern, it's fun and rewarding! I'm using the bag to carry around my knitting projects now!

Hello there.

Hi. I'm Liv. I felt like starting a blog. I am quite self-conscious about this so bear with me at first, at least until I get over myself. Like it says over on the side there, I'm a young lawyer living in upstate New York. Right now it is frigid here, has been for months, and will continue to be so for the indefinite future. It's not stir-craziness that's inspiring me to start blogging, but I do think that everything slows down quite a bit in the winter. Nothing much is going on, and everyone stays at home inside. For my husband and me, it's all about staying within a 10-foot radius of our woodstove, trying to keep warm. I have mixed feelings about the woodstove - love the cozy heat and warmth; dislike dragging logs in from outside and spending half an hour getting soot up to my elbows, trying to coax the damn thing started. It makes me appreciate the effortlessness of turning a dial to get heat, but at the same time I'm grateful not to be supporting our country's oil dependency. Yes, wood heat has plenty of environmental issues of its own. Let's not open up that can of worms.

Anyway, clearly I am a country girl because I have just spent my first blog post debating (with myself) the merits of various types of home heating systems. I'm gonna let this first post speak for itself.