The World Needs More Submissives

Have you noticed that you can hardly exist in public anymore without some little gestured escalating to potentially violent situations?

Humanity is Losing It's Ability To Avoid Conflict
I'm reading a fascinating book by Temple Grandin called "Animals Make Us Human", where she discusses how the further away from wolves that domesticated dogs get through breeding, the more they lose "submissive behaviors" that allow wolves to de-escalate potentially explosive situations. So if you put a Jack Russell terrier in with a pack of unrelated dogs, any conflict could easily escalate to a violent and damaging interaction.

Similarly, people in this country have lost all ability to avoid conflict, and often, simple reactions escalate into bitter argument or worse.

The other week there was a woman sitting behind me on the plane who despite two loudspeaker warnings, continued to talk on her cell phone.

Now, I could talk about the safety issues of cell phones potentially interfering with tower communications (which they do...I've experienced it first hand as a pilot), but truthfully, the woman's conversation was just plain annoying, and I wanted her to stop.

I turned and gave her a dirty look.

This initiated a verbal attack from her that was way more forceful than was called for. She berated me directly and she berated me to the person with whom she was speaking on the phone for about five minutes. I was actually a little worried the interaction would get physical.

When did it happen that any feedback to a stranger requires them to go from zero to rage in 3 seconds? God forbid you should point out that someone littered. Don't even think about asking someone to control their child in a restaurant or grocery store. It's scary even to let someone know that their collar is askew.

Folks are way too tense and need to start re-establishing suppression techniques.

Current Knitting
I've re-started the cashmere lace knitting project, but didn't make much headway, and I definitely didn't pack it to bring with me to work and the Men's Knitting Retreat this coming weekend.

I also started a new sock project, basing the design on a pattern in a Regia pamphlet specifically designed using Kaffe Fassett sock yarn.

I'll post a picture in my next blog entry of both projects.

Current Spinning
I ended up plying some of those blue/green/purple singles I made with Black Bunny Fiber roving, and I plied it with dark charcoal gray alpaca singles.

The yarn turned out a bit thinner than I expected...it's a light-weight fingering yarn, and I'm not sure I have enough to make a full pair of socks, but I still have some of the colored singles left, and I also have more alpaca roving that I could spin up.

This is the yarn I'm using for my current sock project.

Readers' Comments/Questions
GuessWhosKnitting writes about the latest sweater, "Can Thaddeus wear the same size and would he wear this? With his hair color, I think it would look wonderful on him too!"

Yes, we wear the same size, and I think he will look good in it as well. We'll see if he's willing to wear it.

Lorelei_D notes, "Also, I Love that the cat is watching the photo session over your shoulder!"

Me too...I meant to mention that, but forgot when I wrote the blog.