Vive la proletariat

This is not really about knitting. It's also not particularly about gibbing. (However, if one or both people I know, love, and will be visiting over the long weekend bought Guitar Hero for his/her PlayStation2, this could be veritably gibbing adjacent.) It's about things that I do myself even though I could pay someone else to do them: Specifically, restringing my guitar.

For the low, low price of, I think $7 (including strings) and about 10 minutes of my time, I could take my guitar to the nice folks at Different Strummer and hum a happy little tune while someone competent put on shiny new strings that stay in tune and don't sound like old steel pennies on silver dental fillings. I could, I daresay, even spend that 10 minutes or so knitting. But I don't. The only time I've ever paid to have someone put a string on my guitar was when my high E-string tried to kill me right before class.

Now, the thing is, I HATE restringing my guitar. I hate it because my insane tabby cat things that string changing is the BEST GAME EVAR and can I just wait until she takes a hit of crack so she can fully enjoy the experience. I hate it because I always manage to stab myself in an important fingertip with one of the high strings. (It's usually the E. E hates me and my capo's laughing at me.) I hate it because the strings never wind up (heh, an impromptu pun!) curled all neat and tight and sexy around the tuning pegs the way they're supposed to. I hate it because I'm BAD at it and it takes me a ridiculous amount of time.

I hate to do it, and yet I have just done it. It took me almost 40 minutes and my right index finger has stopped bleeding and is now turning purple around a most impressive puncture wound. It was probably my most successful attempt to date. Plus I put on my bitchin' new Bad Batz Maru strap. Why do I have a Bad Batz Maru strap, you might ask, given that I am not a 11-year-old girl? I have a Bad Batz Maru strap because I did NOT buy a Bad Batz Maru bass in an effort to keep the instruments at which I suck at 2.

But I digress. I hate changing my strings and I have an affordable, easy out. But I do it myself under the principle that if I CAN do it, I SHOULD do it. That way, in the words of Ms. Willow Rosenberg, lies churning one's own butter and making sweaters out of sheep. So this does actually have something to do with knitting, because don't look now, but I think that's a sheep behind me.

I have become ridiculously snooty about knit clothing since I started knitting. Yes, I am aware of the irony in that fact, given that I am the primary purveyor of fine Crafty Fucktard entries around here. I'm a horrible snob about material, but that's merely an elaboration of a tendency I've always had. But looking at a piece, being able to take it apart into its component techniques, and thinking "I could make that . . . "? That's new. New and ever-so-slightly crazy. Ok, so not so slightly. Shut up.

This isn't some kind of personal economic revolution. I recently paid (or, rather, my spouse paid) to have my house cleaned. It's lucky I wasn't here, otherwise I think I would have wept and cleaned the feet of the housecleaners with my tears and hair. I am oh-so-very-willing to have someone else grow, raise, and/or slaughter my food (though I have bourgeoise guilt about this). I don't feel the need to start a cotton field so that I can raise denim from seeds. And despite the sheep eye I'm getting, I can't see myself ever wanting to spin or dye my own yarn.

Knitting and stringing: It's a weird line in the sand, but 'tis mine own.

In completely unrelated news, Frankenblankie is blocked and ready to be shipped to my brand new niece, who was born yesterday.