I just wanted to read a magazine…

I happily made it to the library just in time before the last snowstorm to stock up on readable, watchable, and listenable materials.  Our small suburban branch of a large county library system is fairly mediocre, so I don’t expect to find much when I go, but this time I discovered that they carry Interweave Knits magazine, so I checked out the whole lot.

I settled in to read a few, only to immediately turn to a defiled page.

Though I consider myself a feminist, I am not without humor, and I quite like occasional trashy bawdy bits.  But this?  I sort of feel like a knitting magazine is the equivalent of a women’s college – I will be safe, protected from the predatory male, accepted and uplifted by my peers, and free to not care how I present myself.*  So I felt a bit shocked to see it.  But then I realized it just really doesn’t make sense – why would she say “Pop ’em out?”  Is she saying that to someone else in the room?  Is she speaking to another person about his pop-out-ables, or another lady about her’s?  Or should it have said, “Would you like me to pop them out?”

It is unclear.

And the writing is a bit shaky, which could suggest that the author is a man with a G.I.’s racy sense humor from the Greatest Generation (as there are many older folks around here).**

Does it seem a little less creepy that it’s probably from an old dude, or more?

I pondered that while I flipped some more pages, until I was stopped again.

This has no ambiguity.

Anyway, it sets my blood to boil when people deface library materials…

So wanting to clear my mind, I chose some different reading material that took me back in time to the days when the author of the graffiti may have been a wee thing.

I had some bad news lately – nothing involving death, illness, or further financial ruin, but soul-crushing in its own way, so I soothed it with a very minor ebay shopping spree of a couple of lots of vintage knitting magazines (that I got for a song).  Included with them were more issues of Minerva which I added to my growing collection.

But what do we have here?

A very demonic baby shouting commands…

I agree with the sentiment – I find no reason to merely sit, you should at least be doing something – be it reading or knitting or whittling.  But the ugly little thing kept alternating between yelling at me and feigning sympathy with my potential knitting frustrations page after page.

But I also don’t quite understand it either – the baby is criticizing the magazine in which it is printed/housed – essentially biting the feeding hand.  Perhaps this is the beginning of the current obnoxious parenting trend of believing a young child should have say over a parent…

Then my feminist hackles began to rise once more…

I know this is minor, and over 50 years ago and thus considered “acceptable” at the time, but why must a wedding band be on the sketch of the hand demonstrating how to knit?

That’s what I say to the whole thing.

No more magazines for me – I’ll just go back to knitting.

*I know this is an inaccurate (and probably stereotypical) portrayal of women’s colleges, and I didn’t give a sh*t how I presented myself throughout my own co-educational academic career.  And also I know that there are some male readers of knitting magazines and male knitwear designers, but they seem to know how to behave themselves in this largely feminine sphere…

**I guess the WWII folks aren’t so abundant anymore – I’m not keeping up with the passage of time, so the dude is more likely pre-boomer, but not by much…