In the meantime, have a joyous yule, happy Hannukah, merry Christmas, and otherwise lovely holiday season!

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Further proof that nothing is truly new: oh, crafty hipsters, you thought you were the first ones to rock owl-covered everything? Owl patch for your bag? Owl tattoo? Knitted owl prophylactic holder? (I may own one of these.) May I present to you CLARA BOW WEARING A HAT OF AN OWL EATING A RAT. Like a boss, 1920s style…like a boss.

Yes, yes, we all know how it ends—but at the risk of sounding like some pothead having a SUPER DEEP EPIPHANY, it is so easy to forget that when history was happening, nobody knew how it was going to end. When—as is going on right now on the feed—the USSR was invading Finland and Britain was waiting out the Phony War, nobody knew it was all going to end in Hitler’s defeat and the Greatest Generation and Tom Hanks storming the beaches somewhere. It was confusing and disorganised and really, really frightening, and I’ve been surprised by how well having these tweets pop up in my feed has gotten that across. And that reaction is only partly motivated by the fact that I keep forgetting it’s a historical feed, so suddenly think Russia is attacking the Finnish people for no reason and we’re about to enter World War III. Which, I suppose, is exactly in the living-history spirit of the thing.

I’ve found that there is a sliding scale of rejection in the poetry world. The lowest, and the harshest, is the form rejection. Usually about a quarter of a sheet of paper, it’s got the letterhead of wherever you submitted, and a polite form letter indicating that due to the volume of their submissions/overall excellence of submitted writing/(implied crappiness of your writing), there isn’t room for your work in their next edition. If you open a letter and are greeted by “Dear Poet,” you know instantly that you’re screwed.

The next step up is the same form letter, but with a handwritten note of some kind. This is the middle ground, so there’s the biggest scope for variety. Sometimes it’s just a quick scribble of “Nice but not for us”; sometimes there will be constructive comments on what you submitted. Especially encouraging are the ones that ask you to submit again.

Until now, the next step up for me has been the jump to an acceptance letter. But this latest response is a full-on letter from the editor of where I submitted, saying how much he enjoyed the poetry but due to market/funding constraints, they can’t publish me. He also suggested a few other places I might go with it. On the one hand, it’s tremendously encouraging—this was the first “la la la if I’m submitting I might as well submit to the best publisher around” foray on my part, so to get a response that my poems went over well is great. But then again, if the reason for a no is “we like your poetry but we can’t sell it,” that’s a MUCH more ominous note for future submissions. (And trust me, if someone in the business of poetry tells you something isn’t profitable THEY ARE NOT KIDDING.)

Not that all that will stop me from submitting elsewhere. It’s already out, as a matter of fact. (I have brief moments of productivity, interspersed amongst long periods of whining about how I should be writing and submitting more.) And despite the note of DOOM POETRY DOOM, it’s still a very nice, very encouraging letter. So once more unto the postal breach, dear friends…

So it’s the weekend after Thanksgiving! And despite the fact that I live in the UK and thus people don’t actually celebrate Thanksgiving (last week a woman at work was like “I think the holiday’s lovely; I wish we celebrated it here.” I was a bit like “Um, the point of the holiday is…you know, never mind.”), it appears all the OMG SALES rhetoric has crossed the Atlantic fairly undimmed.

And here is my dilemma: I really really hate being told when to buy shit. I hate the screaming sales on things I don’t need, I hate the pointless ceremony around going to Wal-Mart at like two am to buy a robot cuisinart (I have never actually done this), and this year I REALLY REALLY FUCKING HATE the fact that many retailers, in a bid to beat everyone else to the Black Friday shoppers, opened so early that they dragged their (minimum wage, un-unionized) workers away from their own goddamn families on Thanksgiving. I hate it.

However, as someone weathering the recession like everyone else in the western world, I am trying to save money where I can right now. Which meant that, despite hating the whole brou-ha-ha, when a midweight wool-blend coat I’ve eyed in the past was on sale for 80% off…I bought it. It was online, and it was Saturday, but I still feel like I’ve betrayed my morals somehow.

Anyone else adhere religiously to Small Business Saturday? Any readers out there who pepper-sprayed their way to an Xbox Kinect? Or are you a fellow sinner like me—buying Christmas cards on Etsy, but with certain shamefaced shopping baskets in a different tab on your browser even now?

Yes, I could have knitted a different gift for this last one. But…the pattern is kind of perfect. It’s fun to knit, avoiding the seaming hell of most knitted toy patterns. It has enough interest to keep me paying attention through leg and a leg and an arm and an arm. It’s freaking adorable. And—and this one is more important than you might think, unless you page through books of baby patterns on the regular—it’s gender-neutral.

I am a victim of my own success. I am repopulating the knitted fields of knitted Africa with my own tribe of nose-asauruses. I am vaguely considering just admitting defeat and getting the pattern tattooed onto my forearm.

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Oh, man. I figure if you’re not sure whether someone will appreciate a handmade gift…don’t make it. It’s a gift, and if not seeing it worn/loved/utilised on a regular basis will piss you off, then you’re expecting something of the gift-ee and that defeats the whole purpose of giving them a present. But that said…I could totally use a set of these ribbons. Not to guilt trip anyone, of course. Just so I know they know.

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Today, the Purvis twins are 30. 11 has always been my lucky number because of our birthday, so when we were growing up, 11/11/11 was this semi-mythical Day In The Future that was going to be a benchmark of us being adults. (We’ll be THIRTY…in the FUTURE!!!)

I’ve started today by eating myself mildly sick on pecan rolls, so I’m still not sure about that whole adulthood thing. But today *is* the first birthday since I moved to England where I didn’t open at least one present early, so there’s a milestone right there.

Anyway, a very happy birthday to Doo, from her twin Moo! Here’s to another eleventy-billion years of obnoxious in-jokes and twin slang. I hope you enjoy the shovel.

And okay, the four herb cuttings are still definitely alive. The spearmint and peppermint are thriving to a slightly alarming extent. But the rosemary and sage are both looking a bit anemic, and I’ve realised I have no idea why. Supposedly they don’t like as much water as the mint, so I’m watering them less. Anything beyond that, and it’s not just that I don’t know what to do, it’s that I don’t even know what the options are. You have dirt! You have water! You have sun! What more do you want from me?!

I guess I might need to swallow my newbie-herb-grower pride and ask our friend for some help. Sure, it’ll be a tiny blow to my ego, but if it means I’ll end up with plenty of rosemary roasted potatoes in my future?—I think you’ll find my appetite is much bigger than my pride…

The winners of the 2011 Times Stephen Spender Prize have been announced today, and (is there possibly a way to say this gracefully? if there is, it’s beyond me) I’m one of them. “Modthryth” was commended, and “The Collar” won the Open category. Both are obviously (obviously? I figure with a name like Modthryth, the reader makes certain assumptions), from my translation of Beowulf.

All of the winning poems (and there are some corkers—“The Whale,” which won the 18-and-under category, is fantastic) can be found here, and the judges’ comments are here. If you’re so inclined, I believe there is also a story about it in the Times today.