Thursday, June 08, 2006

A Rant, and more

I love my library. The staff is wonderful. Wanda and Crystal and the other ladies make the Bridgewater Branch of SSRL a really COOL place to visit. They're not only smart, or nice, or friendly, but they're also all honest-to-goodness helpful. With a smile. It's not that they have a huge collection of books over which they preside. But they will help you get access to practically any book you have your heart set on. Once I even got a book brought in from Manitoba, I believe it was. That's where they found what I needed. Amazing. Because of this kind of service, I try to donate money or books or movies whenever I am able. My small way to say thank you, and to help in any little way to make it a better place for other patrons.

(This is where the rant begins.) Recently I managed to borrow the above pictured book through ILL. Good book. Interesting book. Informative book. I found this through scanning it. Then Saturday night I sat down to read it from the beginning. I was really enjoying it until I got to page 18. Page 19 was missing. WTF??? Pages 20 - 22 were also missing! That really pissed me off. The whole section on motifs is missing. Destroying a book is wrong. Even worse because this book doesn't just belong to one idividual. It's not only the one individual that is deprived of the information of the missing pages but any future person wishing to learn about this particular subject. This book was published in 1985. Odds of finding a replacement copy are slim. And lets face it, any copy that may be found is probably going to cost more than the original. I sure hope it wasn't a knitter that could be so selfish or rude. I had hoped that knitters as a whole would be more principled than go ripping patterns from books for their sole enjoyment. It's not like the book couldn't be signed out again if the "thief" wasn't finished with it. I am not going to apologize for using that word. People don't like to think of themselves in such low esteem. But what else is it but stealing? What?? It's not stealing because that person only took a few pages? Give me a break. I wish eternal torment of conscience on the person with such low regard for public property! (End rant.)

James in the "Penthouse Suite"
...because everyone knows that the penthouse is the best, sleeping on wool socks makes it even better! (That'll teach my husband to leave his sock drawer open!)
I started these on Sunday, when I needed something to keep my hands busy while watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. On a 5mm crochet hook, and Bernat chunky, it makes for a project that practically crochets itself and lets my brain take a vacation. I was somewhat surprised when my daughter said she liked the black one better but not too much because "it's holey". I haven't decided how many of these squares I will join together to make something. May be a blanket, may turn into a couch cover, but I strongly suspect it will end up in the kids' rooms as a toy accessory of sorts.

2 comments:

Mary Anne said...

Barbara,

I can relate to your experience with the missing pages. I just had to alert our library about a knitting book that had 6 pages torn out. I've read elsewhere that it's happening more often. Sad to see.

I like the colourways of your crochet squares very much!

Desperate Housewife said...

That is just plain rude and inconsiderate!
I'm very anal about books, and dog-eared pages, broken spines and torn out pages really get my hackles up.
People never borrow my books twice.