Current event snippet of the week...

My husband brought my attention to a story on Slate about the arrest of a six-year old in Florida for throwing a temper tantrum in class. When the police showed up, they also charged her with resisting arrest for crawling under a desk. This kid ended up being charged with 2 misdemeanors and a felony. And she's six. Six !!! It's crazy! At first I thought that this was one of those weird isolated incidents that could only happen in some parts of the USA, but after mulling it over, I googled 'arrest of six year old', and I hit multiple links to stories of arrested schoolchildren for doing kid things i.e. not murder or carrying a weapon or drug possession or anything serious along those lines. I found a story about a 7-year old boy arrested for leaning against his dirt bike on a city street (in a region where it's illegal to ride a dirt bike on a city street). I also found a story about a 12-year old girl arrested for eating a french fry on a public transport system, and another two about the arrest of a 5-year old and a 6-year old. Now I don't want to be preachy, but I think that something is seriously wrong with a society when this sort of thing happens. But what exacly is wrong is harder to nail down. Are children getting "worse"? Are parents not spending enough time with their children? Are schoolteachers lacking child management skills? Is it racial discrimination or a result of the ever-growing rift between rich and poor? These are not easy questions and have no easy answers... so here's some food for thought: a report on 'under 12 under arrest' and 'what's in a name'.

Now I'm getting off the soapbox and showing off some yarn...
This is Wolle Roedel Diamant, a fingering weight cotton, and the intended purpose for this stuff is a gift for Delenn, and she already checked out the colors on the yarn shop's website.
Hey Delenn, if you're having second thoughts about the color let me know, because I bought only one ball for swatching - the color is petrol green. I'm getting stitch gauge (on the 2 inches of my 4-inch swatch) but not row gauge so I'll have to do some math. Yuck. It's a fingering weight cotton, and the winning needle size from the swatching is a 3 mm needle. This stuff is composed of 5 strands of mercerized and gassed cotton loosely spun together, so knitting with it is really annoying. It's like knitting with 5 yarns (very very skinny yarns) held together. And it's very slippery, so it dosen't like to stay in ball form. But, all drawbacks considered, my stockinette looks fantastic!
Nice even stitches... what more could I ask for?

Ivanova