Warblerneck

"This fog is thick as peanut butter."

"You mean pea soup."

"You eat what you like and I'll eat what I like!"

- Yukon Cornelius and Hermey the Elf

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Organic is as organic does.

I don't know what that means. I never really understood the original line either.....I guess I'm the "stupid does."

Anyway, if you have a chance, please go HERE and read this post. This is a very awesome knitting blog, by the way, but today she's talking about something a little different.

A similar vein of conversation has been rattling around in my head for a while. I haven't really been blabbering on about "An Inconvenient Truth" partly because it would probably be pretty boring to read about how I'm trying to recycle and save gas, blah, blah, blah. It's important, but not that newsworthy. But I have been making attempts at this, and getting stymied in several places.

For instance, the grocery store. I want to buy local and buy organic....But if you went to the link above, you can see that it's getting increasingly hard for anyone to figure out what that means. There is quite a bit of "organic" produce at the Hannaford grocery store near me, but I swear, each cucumber and apple is INDIVIDUALLY SHRINK WRAPPED AND IS SITTING ON A STYROFOAM TRAY. What the F??? And which is worse - a tomato from the next state over soaked in pesticide, or an organic tomato lovingly grown without pesticides, sung to by an opera singer, polished with the finest chamois cloth, and then stuck on an 18 wheeler that gets 10 miles per gallon and runs over 2 groundhogs, a prairie chicken and a stray dog on the way to a grocery store on the opposite side of the country? I don't know what to buy. Either way I'm going straight to hell.

I spend a lot of time wandering around and around and around the produce section of the grocery store, muttering to myself. People are starting to stare.

In other news, I found an awesome website for recycling stuff: earth911.org.You can type in your zip code to find options near you, or type in the article of interest that you desperately want out of your house, but don't want to send to a landfill.

Despite appearances, I have been knitting.


See this little red pile of crap?

I've knit this same little cuff of a sock 14 times over the past week or so. I got totally inspired by these frickin' awesome kneehigh socks that January One has been knitting. Her photography is spectacular too, by the way. Can you see how easy it is to get addicted to some of these blogs? Her banner at the top changes - keep flipping back in for more pictures.

Anyway, I've been so inspired by these knee highs, and actually waiting with baited breath to see how they progressed, that I couldn't stand it any more. Especially since I have several skeins of my own Socks That Rock burning a hole in my stash. And I swear, I actually made a gauge swatch and everything. Did all the math in the pattern (even though I hate math, especially math I'm not getting paid to do) but somehow the cuff came out more than 20 stitches too big. And now that I have the sizing right, it's all uneven and laddery and stuff. So screw it. I'm going to hide this under the couch and start one toe up. Maybe that will work.

3 Comments:

At 2:18 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

ok, besides the good laugh as usual, i did have a couple responses to your report. i took a peek at the blog site you suggested as well.

what i have come down to is a compromise on what i get and it rarely- actually never- involves food from the organic section of the grocery store. i whole heartedly agree, there is nothing appetizing about one apple wrapped in plastic and on a foam tray and neither is the price. so i buy what looks good, has the least packaging and is reasonable in price. and i try to make use of local places, especially in growing season, as much as i can. another alternative, though not always helpful, is a store selling organic stuff exclusively: what they used to and sometimes still do call a health food store. but the chains by this name seem just as artificial as the organic section of the grocery store. sometimes they are 95% bottles of pills. gimme a break.

i am also beginning to wonder if this 'certified' organic stuff isn't another ploy to ruin the small local farmer. see the site you cited as well as your own comments for evidence. it may be that many small farmers can't make the change to organic when they are already close to the bone on expense. so i have gotten so i have just let the whole organic thing go. my first priority is to buy locally, second to buy what looks tasty, third is price and last is organic.

so that's my story and i'm sticking to it. btw, what are you going to do when it's full under your couch? if you stuffed the failed projects in your walls maybe they would help with insulation? no-one will ever look there.

 
At 2:27 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

oh wait! one more comment. tell me you really already knew this. it isn't 'baited breath'. it's actually 'bated breath. the 'bated is short for abated. it means stopped or held. it's not often i know something about english that you don't.

 
At 10:49 PM, Blogger Wendy Merganser said...

Oh no! I made a horrible English error! ha, ha! What is wrong with me lately? I'm out of touch. So "baited breath" sounds like I've been eating too many night-crawlers, don't it?

 

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