It was 5am and I woke up thinking about the pit that the house was fast becoming. The diningroom table, which is pretty central to the whole house and the first point of focus when you enter the front door, has become trash pit for everything that needs to be *put down* when we come home. Stuff is piling up. Lots of what’s there are the stacks of mail that need sorting, when we get a minute. Most is junk. One of the guys that empties my mailbox for me when I’m away told me that he has never seen so much junk mail. He’s right. I’ve never been able to figure out why we get so much. Yesterday, being sort of cold and icy and that I had SO much office stuff to catch up on after being out *on* the job so much recently, I did not take the time to go for a real walk. Instead, I walked to the mailbox twice and drove to the post office once to collect the mail, stretch my legs and get a breath of fresh air. Here’s what I discovered. Not all the junk is really mine (as if I didn’t already know this, ha!)
- We get mail for C’s ex-wife. He’s been divorced for more than 25 years. She never lived her, nor anywhere near here. But, her alumni mail comes to us, none the same. I’d have it forwarded to her, but I know she doesn’t want it either. She’s busy too.
- Mail for a dear friend of mine comes here. He died almost 15 years ago. He also never lived here. Mostly it’s requests for donations, he gave to lots of charities. Now, I get them.
- We both get mail that has a combination of names made from parts of both of our names but not really belonging to either of us. When I see these strangulations of our names I know to throw them away, fast!
Seems a terrible waste, all that paper, energy, just junk that needs to get recycled.
That ends my Wednesday rant.
Knitting:
Last night I started knitting on the neckband. The pattern has you knit a 4 stitch wide 4" long strip, then attach it. I decided to knit it and attach it as I knit, picking up one edge stitch and knitting it with the last stitich on the needle. Had Sam not shown quite so much interest, I’d have it to show, finished. He wanted to sit with me, and as I’ve said, this yarn pulls easily.
So I picked up another project. The Backyard Leaves scarf by Annie Modesitt from Scarf Style… funny thing about this pattern. When I cast on for it a couple weeks ago (before I stuffed it into the bottom of the bag and misplaced the pattern), I thought it was really confusing. Last night, while watching a movie, it all made sense. That’s with a glass of wine. I should probably run to "knock on a bit of wood" at this. Maybe it *was* the wine. I’ll let you know. This is not a project I’d take with me to a knitting group. It’s not a pattern I could follow and take part in a conversation. It is fun. I’m not through the first repeat, it’s early.
Comments
6 responses to “junk mail and new (junk) projects”
Oh, I want to make that scarf! Your yarn choice is lovely. And, ditto about the junk mail — we get mail here for the folks who owned this house two owners ago. Such a waste of energy and resources! Can it be that someone actually responds to all this junk and that’s why they keep it up or is it corporate inertia?
One interesting thing to do is to sign up for your next magazine subscription/catalog (or whatever) with a just slightly mis-spelled version of you name – its fun to see which junk mail is attached to which vendor sold your name to the marketing companies. Well, maybe not fun, but enlightening.
Lovely scarf too!
A lot of things are better with wine! Annie’s pattern is really great, isn’t it?
Did you hear about the court case involving some mailmen who refused to deliver junk mail to their customers? Their employers fired them and they’re trying to get reinstated because all they did was obey the wishes of homeowners who requested that they not receive junk mail…
The junk mail IS accelerating. I have a pile that I’m supposed to go thru when I have a moment. The pile is getting very very big. I did that address glitch once, and then promptly forgot the original place I sent it to. Plus, each subsequent buyer probably sells it to someone else, so the tracking loses meaning.
I like how Backyard Leaves is starting. It’s (still) on my list. I need to focus more and start these things.
For the mail coming to your deceased friend, you can just write “deceased” on the envelope and “return to sender”, and for the ex (or mangled names) write “not at this address” and “return..” Most companies don’t want to pay all of the return postage and will remove those names from the mailing list, especially if they get returned mail more than once from the same address. If you get duplicates of catalogs, you can usually call the company and let them know about the duplicates (my last name gets mangled often and results in several of the same catalog) and they’ll cancel all but the correct one. I’ve been admiring the Backyard Leaves Scarf (I have the perfect green wool for it), but the directions looked too confusing. Maybe I’ll give it a try after all.
A number of years ago I put myself on that list to cut opt out of junkmail. It worked, but also stopped catalogs from companies I want to get things from. If you want the info I can send you the URLs.
I loved the Backyard Leaves pattern (yes, it was the wine -grin). There’s something about how it looks like the chart-from-hell and then turns into the most logical pattern that is immensely satisfying. Yours looks great!