Olley Olley Oxen Free!

Okay, so the tag.

Jess from Quilt Baby tagged me on her blog and so now I ave to tell you 5 random things about myself and tag 5 other people. SO here goes:

1. I am an academic at heart. I could sit for hours and discuss the significance of the golden ring in The Merchant of Venice. No, really. I once wrote a 20 page paper about Cross-Dressing in the Literature of the English Renaissance. It's kind of sick how much I love that stuff. I don't get to do it anymore (unless you count a detailed deconstruction of Click, Clack, Moo ) but that's okay. It was something that brought me a lot of confidence after years and years of an academic beat down in a terribly boring school system. I was told in 6th grade that doing a book report on Watership Down was too hard for me so I shouldn't even try it. I kicked that report's ass and felt good about proving my teacher wrong, but I gave up on academics and coasted by with steady Cs until college, when I found Shakespearean Studies and fell in love with Lit. Crit. I don't like to analyze all books, though. I love Henry Miller (who Henry is named after), Charles Bukowski and John Fante who, as a pretty forward thinking feminist, I should by all rights loathe. But my signed Bukowski sits in perfect harmony on my bookshelf snuggled up next to my signed Gloria Steinem. I know, I make no sense. I also love John Steinbeck and Nick Hornby and Douglas Coupland (who I had the pleasure of seeing read a long time ago). So anyway. Even though I don't have much reading time these days, it is one of my true loves.

2. I also have really weird taste in music. My favorite band of all time is probably Belle and Sebastian, but I also have a strange but true love of Hall and Oates. My taste pretty much runs the gamut, minus 99% of country music. I have seen a bajillion shows. I was going to try to write the ones I can remember but that would be ridiculous. The show that meant the most to me was Nina Simone. We were lucky enough to get tickets to one of her 8 American shows on her last tour, at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor, MI about a month after a family tragedy. She opened with a cover of Here Comes the Sun and I cried. I cried through almost the whole show, it was so amazing and moving and wonderful. She died shortly after.

3. I have weird food phobias. I can't touch raw meat. Wet food (like in the sink) completely freaks me out. Especially soggy bread. Ugh! It gives me the wiggins just thinking about it. And I hate making juice from concentrate. I can never open the can without spilling syrup on me or the counter or the floor and it is so. sticky. You can almost feel the sugar seeping into your skin. Blech. I know. Weird.

4. I tell my husband to please turn down the music or TV approximately 75 times a day. I can't tell if I'm getting old and sensitive to sound or if he's getting old and deaf.

5. I am kind of a recycling freak. We have no deposit law here in NC (which I hate!) so people throw recyclables away all the time. I have been known to walk by a trash can and pick out a bottle or can if it is right on top to take it to recycle. I routinely pull paper out of the trash at school and put it in the recycle bins. The kids aren't being taught to recycle so they throw everything in the trash. It drives me crazy. This is why when you order things from me, I put lots and lots of time and care and love into making the item and then stick them in an envelope and send them to you without any pretty paper or other attractive packaging. I can't stand the thought of it being thrown away. Sometimes I put freebies in a little bag with business cards, but otherwise I try to keep my packaging down. Oh, but shipping wool items in one of those Flat Rate cardboard mailers freaks me out because they could get wet, so I DO put them in a plastic shipping bag first. But I leave the top unsealed hoping that you'll reuse it. I hope you do and if you do throw it right in the trash, don't tell me *lalalaIcan'thearyou*

Now to tag other. Hmmm...

First I'm going to tag my wonderful sister in law, Kirstin, because I know she doesn't have anything better to do-what with a teething 6 month old and moving into a new house and trying to start a screenprinting biz. I don't want to link to her, though, because her blog is super secret. She's an international woman of mystery.

Second, I'm going to tag Voz of Fishcakes. She is the awesome mama who designed my new Crankypants monster and makes all of the monster stickers, pins, magnets, patches and whatnot you might see stuffed in your packages or floating around on my site. I don't think she reads here so she probably won't see herself getting tagged, but you guys should go check out her site because she rocks.

I'm also going to tag Joyce of Elliebelly because she consistently astounds me with the sheer number of beautiful things she can churn out. She crosses mediums and makes all sorts of amazing things. It is crazy.

The other 2 people I would tag are people who have already been tagged so I am going to leave it at that.

If you haven't received an invoice from me yet for your June slot, please email me right away. We need to talk!