Tough enough.

My morning routine (while waiting for High School Girl to catch her 6:15 am bus) includes reading the AJC online, scanning emails to prioritize my day (deadlines change by the hour), and checking into Ravelry, my favorite knitting virtual world.

This morning, I saw this:  Tough Gals: Do They Still Exist? 

Women are girly. Again.

Don't believe me? The proof is in the blogosphere: Women who blog about cupcakes! Women who blog (okay, rant) about gardening, Hello Kitty, and knitting! Even BUST magazine is sponsoring a Craft Fair in NYC. Women who blog about cats! And then there are cats who blog, but let's not get into that just now. Don't get me wrong, these are all lovely blogs, smart and entertaining. And some blogs, like the wonderful Jezebel, keep us on our toes pointing out what a long way we haven't come, baby (like in this piece on how female superheroes are sexualized). But.. seriously... cupcakes?"

Oh, bless her heart. This one-dimensional thinker has mistaken women's hard-won choices for copping out. She implies that the things men do are preferable to "girly" activities such as running a cupcake business, knitting for relaxation between working all day/tending to family needs, and wearing high fashion as we wage business wars.

So women can only be feminists if we act like men, work like men, look like men, and do "manly" things?

Ridiculous.

One commenter said,

"Perhaps women are girly again because finally we can be, without being thought weak. The hard work of a generation of feminists who felt they needed to be ball busters in order to be taken seriously has yielded this fruit: women who are not afraid to show their creative side, women who have been able to turn passionate hobbies into successful careers, women who are REAL."

There are trace elements of men who still patronize women in the workplace. Women have learned to deal with them deftly, moving around them or bowling over them when necessary. But bloggers like this, someone I believe is a young woman, are simply unfathomable in their snide superiority and complete lack of understanding that the success of the women's equal rights movement isn't a manly paradigm ... it's the opportunity to be women, in all the wide diversity of the gender.

As for the knitter the Huffington Post blogger "dissed," the Yarn Harlot has garnered over $1 million in donations to Doctors Without Borders. While knitting. And talking about knitting.

I am knitter. Hear me roar.

I wish I had time to knit . . .

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee rocks! I was one of 700 lucky knitters who packed the Milan Theater in Atlanta's trendy Midtown, just around the corner from hosting LYS Knitch. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution sent a bemused photographer and wrote a typically condescending article. Head-shaking passersby murmured, "what's the big deal?" as we stood in line for an hour before the doors opened for the knit-in portion of the event. And we merrily knitted away, happy to just BE.

A wonderful non-knitter stood in line next to me, letting me wind a ball of yarn from a skein I'd just purchased at Knitch for a Calorimetry (which I began and was just one row away from finishing by the time the Yarn Harlot wrapped up). I saw gals with tattoos next to ladies in pearls, tweens in plaid bermudas and guys in pressed chinos and button-downs . . . it was the usual can't-pin-us-down crowd.

The Harlot opened her marvelous "lecture" with a treatise on the stupid stuff people say to knitters. Fave - "I wish I had time to knit," with its implication that while we're idling away at something unimportant, the speaker has so many more meaningful and busy things to do.

Which made me think of some other gems:

"There you go again. Do you knit all the time?" Sure. I don't go to work or take care of my kids or cook meals or do chores or write or tend to a thousand different details of daily life. I just knit. All the time.

"I saw a sweater/socks/scarf/hat/bag just like that at Target." No, you didn't. What you saw was cheap, machine-made goods with no soul. This is hand-made meditation.

"My grandmother used to crochet." I'm knitting. And while I'm likely as old as your grandma was when you were a kid, I'm not your grandmother.

"I've always wanted to learn how to knit. I guess I need to take some classes." Or you could just sit down this minute, let me show you a few stitches, and get started. (I offer every time.) It really isn't rocket science.

Aaahhh. I feel much better.

Pearl-McPhee also talked about her just-blogged fiasco of an AM wake-up, when all of her alarms failed her - or not. She awakened at 5:30 am, half an hour past her wake-up call, and blasted the front desk. Only to learn that it was actually 4:30 am and that her room clock was wrong.

That has SO happened to us at one time or another.

Then Delta lost her luggage (filled with 30+ skeins of yarn and a few items of clothing).

Despite the chaos, she gave us so much of herself. And we are deeply appreciative.

Thanks, Yarn Harlot! May your luggage catch up with you before the next step on your whirlwind speaking tour!

What fruit can never get married?

Cant-elope. That's the gem my groggy daughter shared as she staggered out of bed this morning. She thinks her thoughts at the oddest times and they burst out unhindered by time or setting or company. So instead of "good morning," she gave me the joke she'd just thought of when I awakened her at 6:30.

It's misty and humid outside. Rain is coming again in droughty Atlanta. We're still on major water restrictions, but our gardens and lawns are bursting thanks to the overindulgence of rain this March. Go figure. The gardens around the Dunwoody Farmhouse are lovely as ever. Too bad Chesnut House still suffers from benign neglect. I'm hopeful that once the residents of Dunwoody have a city we can take better care of our special places.

I'm eager for Sunday to come. I scored one of the few tickets for the Yarn Harlot's impending visit, thanks to Knitch. I'm taking a rare break from family and duties to spend an afternoon among kindred spirits. I'll have yarn in hand and will not feel the least self-conscious about knitting while I listen since hands will be flying all around me.