being the first Queen's Meme

Once upon a time in a faraway Bloggiverse there lived a maiden named Queen Mimi Pencil Skirt. She slayed her own dragons, stoked her own fire and well.....wrote memes by the light of the Bloggingham moon.

1. You are in court. You are in deep doo-doo. What did you do?('Cause if you want, I might could talk to the judge and get your sentence reduced to Bloggingham dungeon time.)
I cheated at the Royal Games. (I've always been bad at Parcheesi.)

2. Your blog just became a best-selling book . What is the title of your book ? Teabird Talks Tofurkey.

3. It is midnight. the phone rings. It is Michael Jackson calling from the Great Beyond. What would you like to ask him?
Did you really go to bed with Liz Taylor?

4. You are having your future told. The fortune teller looks in the crystal ball, screams and leaves the room in fright. What did they see?
My secret plan to clone Emily Dickinson.

5. You're blogging along minding your own blusiness (that's blog + oh...you know) when Google unexpectedly puts a Objectionable Content Warning on your blog. Your own mother is afraid to enter! What, pray tell, did you do to warrant it? How did this happen? Do you think you deserve it? Just how objectionable are you? Do tell.
Someone must have taken umbrage when I said that Microsoft is the antichrist.

6.You suddenly become God of the Universe. What would your first Commandment be?
Neither human nor yarn shall ever snarl again.

7.And finally... what secret would you like to tell the Queen? Not to worry. What happens in Bloggingham, stays in Bloggingham.

Brevity is the soul of wit. (I stole that.)

(I found this new meme via Autumn. Cool, yes? Click here to play along!)

Tea Ching

This small person learned a big lesson this Sunday past. We Panera ladies had been talking about women and textiles, how collectively we felt connected to women who had gone before as knitters, seamstresses, weavers, and how fortunate we are to be able to do these things for enjoyment and meditation instead of necessity. We always invite people to join the Panera group.


This week, a newbie came (YAY!)for knitting guidance. Since she sat next to me,I grabbed her first I started by taking a look at her needles, which already had stitches cast on and some stitches knitted, courtesy of her mother. I purled a row to loosen them up, and asked her to show me how she held the needles, or which hand held the yarn. She seemed to take them up using her left hand for the yarn, so I started to guide her through the basics of a Continental knit stitch.

(I knit Continental. I have to - not only is that the way my mother taught me, the way the old ladies from Eastern Europe taught her, but I'm also hopelessly directionally-challenged. Tell me to wrap yarn clockwise or widdershins and my brain cuts out. Tell me to "scoop" and I'm fine.)

She soon was frustrated. I might be a terrible teacher, but I also can sense when something is just not happening. I would guide her hands, or hold the yarn, or talk her through, stitch-by-stitch, but - it just was not happening, despite her fervent desire to learn. Her hands were not cooperating.

Then quirky artist Amy realized what was awry. Amy can knit Continental, she can knit English, she can knit spiderweb yarn that she has spun into her sister's wedding shawl, and she can teach knitting really, really well. Amy realized that our new friend's hands wanted something else. As soon as Amy switched her from Continental to English, presto! Happy hands! She started knitting smoothly and evenly, and she started smiling. We all applauded - truly, it was a wonderful moment.

(Something similar happened when the Tsarina taught me to use a drop spindle - my hands knew that they needed to reverse the directions my guru was teaching.) (You can read the story here.)

I love moments like this, moments when a barrier is eliminated by honoring how many paths can lead to the same place. It's something I know, philosophically, but I'm not good at watching for it in daily life. Pay attention to the path and the destination will take care of itself, yes? Trust the process.