Goodbyes are hard, unless it's someone you dislike

Roundup:

Arkansas: You have lovely hills and the leaves are beautiful. The people are (for the most part) very nice and the food is awesome. I love that La Masion du Tart has bushes of herbs growing outside. Also, the fresh bread is so yummy, I had some this morning for breakfast.

Target: To quote Pants, and a tv show, "You magnificent bastard!" I write a post about crocheting and the next day you have yarn and needles available on your dollar aisle? Have you been reading my blog??? Also, I love your dog paraphernalia. My dogs love both their flannel and toile beds that were purchased from your oft-tread aisles.

crocheting/knitting: So I got tons of advice, thanks mostly to Brit, who I hope makes it to the U.S. without much trouble. I also checked out crocheting ( and knitting) for dummies, which have proved pretty useful, except that I'm still lost on how to do a granny square. I followed the instructions, but I think they're just poorly worded, I need lots and lots of pictures to show me what I'm supposed to be doing. OH well. I'll just keep making little doggie sweaters.

Dogs: Love mine.

My little brother's EX-girlfriend: That's right! He broke up with her! Thank goodness, it only took a couple of years, but my little brother has managed to do some pretty amazing (for him) and mature things lately. He broke up with his user girlfriend because he knew she was more into it than he and that it was going no where. Also, he got a good job with a lot of potential to go a lot higher and I think he feels like he's got more of a purpose now.

IPods: They're everywhere and I love mine, but am confused as to how I managed to fill it so fast. I was making my Christmas shopping list the other day and realized that an iPod would be the perfect gift for just about everyone on my list. This, of course, would only be a realistic answer to my shopping needs if I were making about twice what I do now. So. Yeah, homemade scarves it is!

Batman Begins: I loved this movie when it came out, it's still a really awesome movie now. However, in watching it again last weekend, I noticed lots of inconsistencies and things that just wouldn't work. Such as: Raj al Gould is using what is basically a vaporizor for water and creating a poisonous steam out of the city's water supply to make everyone crazy. This wouldn't work. The human body is made up of mostly water, and a vaporizor that was that powerful would have totally vaporized a lot of people that were between the vaporizor and the water supply, as well as the city's water supply. I'm just saying. Granted, it's a movie, it's fiction and we're supposed to suspend belief in reality for the duration of the film. However, they don't tell you the rules, so you assume things like gravity work. Christian Bale, however, makes it worth watching. If you want to watch this young genius in his early years, catch "Empire of the Sun." It's awesome.

Twix: I know I bought you for trick or treaters, but you're all mine, now.

All purled up with no where to go

OK people, I need some suggestions. Unlike Pants, I'm not asking the hard-hitting questions like "What ring-tone should I get?" That's already a given, I'll be using "Sex bomb" by Tom Jones. My query is a bit more knotty, literally. When I was very little, my grandma taught me to crochet.

Nothing fancy, but I could chain like a mo-fo, and, in fourth-grade moved on to single and double stitches. I was mass-producing the coolest scarves in the world. All sorts of colors and yarns, but they all had the same stitches. Borrrringg.

So in college I taught myself to knit by reading Web sites. I thought this could be my out, I could finally start doing crazy bags or ponchos for my dog. Not so much. For some reason knitting just seems to take even longer than crocheting, so I've gone back to the crocheting.

In the past two weeks, I've done two scarves, a manly blue one for my brother and a shorter, thicker one that has a slit on one of the ends so you can pull the other side of it through for my mom. I'm going to add some beads that pick up the color later, to "fancy" it up a bit, but my yarn imagination is reaching a stretching point. I need help people.

Does anyone know of any good, simple instruction books for crocheting or knitting? Any good places to take classes? I've found that I learn this kind of thing best when someone just shows me how. I'd love to get into doing sweater, cardigans, bags etc. Any ideas?