The story of Steven Slater blowing the chute on a JetBlue airliner--and his aviation career--resonates with anybody who has been demeaned on the job by a boss or the public he or she is trying to serve.

Whether or not he was insulated, assaulted or simply sick of asking grumpy passengers for their beverage preferences, Slater's actions, illegal though they may be (oh, for William Shatner as Denny Crain to handle Slater's case!), became the stuff of legend, because he had the cojones to sail out of an untenable situation with style, harming no one but his employer. Who hasn't felt the exact same way?

I have and did, though there was no chute to deploy. It was my first job out of college and I was serving as the de facto editor of a tiny, alternative newspaper, having been promoted beyond my experience because of staff attrition. The man we worked for was a mysogynist and a sadist, who thought nothing of berating editors in front of their reporters or walking through the layout room, remarking, "I sure have hired a staff with great asses." Ha. Ha.

It was the early 1980s before Anita Hill when we really didn't have words for this kind of behavior. When he gave me a copy of How to Make Love to a Man at the holiday Christmas party--a comment on what he accurately surmised was my inexperience in bed--I had no idea how to respond. I read the book but would have preferred a bonus.

And he didn't limit his insults to women. One night, after having to write some hair-brained story spun from our publisher's coke-induced musings, a colleague called in a drunken rage, swearing he was going to kill himself and come back as a cancer in this man's prostate gland.

I worried for my friend's mental health, but also thought, "I'll have what he's having."

In the two-and-a-half years I worked there, I saw many talented writers and editors pack up their typewriters and Rolodexes, politely in some cases, angrily in others, and walk into the Denver recession and successful writing careers.

When he questioned my news sense over a dispute about a story featuring a newspaper-sponsored hockey league with a female player and a mobile home park who's tenants faced eviction, I left his office enraged. I walked into the newsroom and looked at my desk, covered in galleys and photos. It was Wednesday, deadline day, and I said to the other writers, "I think I'm going to quit." 

Two writers took me to lunch. Not to talk me out of it, but to give me a chance to calm down enough to make a rational decision. The collective wisdom at the time: Yea, quit.

I returned to the newsroom, packed a box, then went into the publisher's office, where sputtering and dropping ef-bombs (which I did only rarely back then) and demanding payment, I quit. I stormed out of the building, threw my small box off stuff into my 1976 baby-shit yellow Corolla and drove home.

Unlike Mr. Slater, who has no doubt ended his career in the sky, my behavior, immature as it was, left no mark on my career but in fact enhanced it. That this publisher had a citywide reputation for abusing good writers stood me in good stead. Within two weeks, I had applied for a passport, started freelancing on my Smith-Corona Selectric, and secured part-time employment at my alma mater.

Could Mr. Slater have handled his situation in a more productive and reasonable manner? Sure, he could have given his two-week notice and flown his remaining lame-duck flights. He could have behaved just the way society expects a fully functioning adult to behave when unhappy at work.

However, by grabbing those two beers and riding that chute to media stardom, Mr. Slater redefined himself and changed the course of his life. I say, you go, cowboy.

Mercerized cotton is a guilty pleasure over here at Chez Nake-id. Though we try to be as organic and au naturale as budgets (and weak wills) allow, mercerized cotton is one of those not-so-natural things to which we give a pass.

What is mercerization, well might you ask? Mercerization is a process by which cotton is held under tension and bathed in a lye solution and then neutralized in acid. (Sometimes referred to as gassed and mercerized, some processors use a gas-fired process to singe off unruly fibers.) This causes the fibers to swell, straighten and acquire luster. It also makes the cotton more accommodating to dyes.

Yarn crafters know mercerized cotton also as pearl (perle) cotton, those tiny irresistable hanks of embroidery thread calling out from the fixtures at Wal-mart. Or my favorite Super 10, which comes in almost 100 colors, and knits up into the sassiest, pastels-be-damned baby togs you can imagine.

So with mercerized cotton, we're talking serious carbon load. Cotton's a nasty crop to begin with, laden as it is with pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. According to the Organic Trade Association, to get enough cotton to produce one t-shirt you need to dose those plants with 1/3 of a pound of chemical fertilizer. Let's all utter a collective, ew.

Add to that the energy it takes to harvest, ship and process the cotton (plus mercerization) and we're talking a lot of energy and loads of chemicals for cute baby knits. 

So before I talk myself out of these baby hats I need to finish, I'll put an end to this. Yeah, I like the Pakucho Organic. But it doesn't come in lime, paradise pink and tangerine.

P.S. For a very reasonably priced tee (organic cotton/recycled poly made in Pakistan) try Threads for Thought. For something pricier with domestic provenance, I like Patagonia's Shroomin' shirt.

P.P.S. I love these organic, Fair Trade shirts, too: Hae Now.

There are books dedicated to them. Web sites. Here's an entire magazine devoted to studios. (I could be wrong, but I think the atelier pictured above is Kaffe Fassett's.)

This category isn't surprising. Who doesn't want a room of one's own in which to dream, think and create. For some of us, though, the creative enterprise gets pretty messy.

This spring after we installed the PP (puny potty) and painted my office, I vowed to reform. I swore that I would no longer allow bags of yarn and knitting books and file folders and magazines and notebooks accumulate. I thought I could change.

I can only imagine that the artists whose work spaces are pictured therein engaged in a flurry of purging, cleaning and styling prior to their photo shoots. Or maybe I'm just projecting. 

This is the not-so-excellent yarn I spun from Black Hills Woolies Teeswater/Cotswold roving. Not to impugn the fiber, which was a delight, but more the skill of the spinner. (Nobody will be locking me in a tower anytime soon and asking that straw be spun into gold. There's some consolation.)

The color is naturally variegated due to how it was carded. And it's a weetle scratchy. Again, my bad, I should have spun it woolen- not worsted-style.

Still. It's 70 yds of finished yarn. What should I do with it? Discuss, please. 

Meet my latest obsession. Obsession meet all three of my readers.

I spied these on a musician recently, and being a girl, she shared their provenance. The shoe is from a company called Cydwoq (pronounced "Sidewalk") that makes all its footwear by hand, domestically. That she is a successful musician and I'm a journeyman freelancer should have alerted me to the fact that we travel in different shoe-budget worlds. Mine is the world of the TJ Maxx clearance rack; hers the realm of bespoke shoes.

I won't be spending $400 on shoes anytime soon. (Honey, if you're reading this, you can exhale now.) But this exercise did send me down the Google rabbit hole of logic that went something like this: If I can make a sweater, one sorry loop at a time, how hard could shoes be.

Turns out there's a growing community of independent shoemakers and hobbyists who do just that. A search of Etsy revealed all kinds of handmade and hand-adorned footgear, everything from yarn-embellished flip flops to these stunning leather sandals from Turkey and red pumps (red!) from Massachusetts. (I've been eyeing these all summer long. We should support our fellow crafters, right?)

There are also shoemaking classes to take--About.com has compiled a list here--and books to buy.

Intriguing, no?

A few weeks ago, I yanked all but one of my brussels sprouts from the garden because of aphids--tiny, translucent succubi that destroy leaves and sap plants of their nutrients. Aphids favor cruciferous vegetables, and worried about the health of the nearby broccoli I wiped out this favorite of all crops except for one plant.

Located on the far western side of the garden, this babied sprout continues to struggle. Every two or three days I blast its leaves with water happily sending large colonies of bugs to a sodden grave. I shudder to think of the karmic debt, but this is about potential, about a dream of an autumnal meal of carmelized, roasted sprouts served alongside root vegetables and savory chicken.

Cheryl, who has a deep appreciation for the natural world beyond the culinary, asked if we had ants. We do, legions of them.

"Sweep them away," she said.

My eyes widened. And incur more karmic wrath?

Aphids, it turns out, have made an unholy alliance with ants, who lull and protect and carry them to favored food sources in exchange for their sweet excretions. Ants will even "milk" the bugs, stroking them with their antennae, until the aphids release these sugary juices.

Nature's disgusting.

"Sweep them away," she shrugged.

OK ants, make my day.

(I'm going to hell.)

Ah, c'mon. Toss me a bone, here. I'm working on a story about new and classic knitting titles and could really use some input beyond the confines of my 10' x 10' office.

If you were building a knitting and crochet library--money is no object--what would you include? Knitting Without Tears? Barbara Walker? Debbie Bliss baby books? The Harmony Guides? The Harlot?

What would you put on your shelves? 

You're stuck on a desert island with nothing but a herd of sheep, a spinning wheel and knitting needles. What three knitting books are must-have?

Go!

All you people in the fecund, woody corridors of the East and Midwest have no idea of the toe-tapping, teeth-grinding and hand-wringing Mile Highers suffer waiting for their gardens to produce. All that moist air and black earth, those glistening hot nights; why you've been pulling peas out of your planters since March, haven't you?

Go look at Norma's post. I'll wait. See those tubs of blueberries? Tubs. Of. Blueberries. My blueberry bush looks like it's been to Mt. Sinai and back and they're flagrantly tossing these lapis gems on cereal. You know where we get blueberries in Colorado? Costco. And they taste like gunshot.

Know what's coming up here? Broccoli. That bright green cruciferous favorite of George H.W. Bush, flowering cabbages, basketfuls of bitter, tough florets left too long on the stalk. And it's time for dinner.

Mark Bittman came to the rescue (not in the flesh, though that would have been nice had he offered to cook). His aid came in the form of How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, which I'm quite liking for its informal toss-this-or-that-in approach. Turn to the aparagus gratin recipe. A riffer, Bittman offers recommendations for other gratins, including a variation for broccoli with pesto, breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese.

I did this on stovetop so as not to heat the house by firing the oven.

Broccoli Gratin by way of Bittman

Sautee broccoli in garlic and olive oil until tender.

Add 1/2 to 3/4 cup pesto  (I did a simple pesto from walnuts, basil, olive oil and salt)

Top with 1/2 cup prepared breadcrumbs (Bittman says, "homemade," whatever)

and 1 cup grated parmesan cheese.

Cover until cheese melts and broccoli is heated through.

You'll like it. Tastes a lot better than it sounds.

Grazie mille, Mark.

Mom knit this little confection for me from Textiles a Mano Rocky Road and Loopity Loop. It's the Raveneli Vest by Jeanne Abel, another clever knit-in-the-round-from-the-outside-in sort of thing. That people can think in these spatial terms renders me speechless. Mom, too. She had no idea from whence she was knitting until she bound off. Cute, isn't it? Kind of Haight-Ashbury-by-way-of-the-Mongolian-Steppe.

Speaking of Mongolia, we supped on our first yak burgers Friday night. Yak is an extremely lean meat, apparently high in Omega 3 fatty acids and other beneficial goodies. It doesn't sizzle on the grill but rather squats, browning slowly in its own time. Cook it quickly and I suspect you'd end up with hockey pucks.

Overall, we were impressed. It produces burgers that are dense and light tasting--yes, a bit like poultry but with the texture of beef. We served it with grilled potatoes and a salad of mixed greens, basil and pine nuts in a balsamic vinaigrette. A peach frozen yogurt sundae followed.

Yak, it's the new bison.