John and I went to take a walk in the Central Park yesterday and this little phone followed us home.

OK, it didn’t actually follow us home, but it was all alone on the path, without an owner in sight. We found it on the east side of the park, somewhere near 72nd Street.

The batteries are running low, so it keeps turning off after a few seconds of turning it on – getting any information from it is a desperate task that makes us feel like we’re in an episode of 24. This sensation is further exacerbated by the way that the phone insists on playing a 5-second ad every time you turn it on. It’s super annoying – don’t get this phone if you haven’t already.

In several very hurried sessions of turning the phone on before it shuts off, John has managed to get the number of the phone (he left a message in case the owner checks his or her voice mail), the number of a friend in the contacts list, and the number listed under “home.” So far, neither the owner nor her good friend nor whoever is at home seems to care about this phone.

We’ve considered returning the phone to a Verizon store, but John thinks they would rather see the owner buy a new phone than see this one returned. So if this is your phone, come and get it! We have enough phones as it is.

Someone recently reminded me that I had promised to knit a giraffe.

So here is my giraffe:

A version with a few (white) spots is in the works. But I actually like the simplicity of this version, even if it would be teased by any real giraffe that came its way. Poor little spotless giraffe!

This toy also gave me the opportunity to do a little “hair” embellishment that seemed somewhat vintage to me, though maybe it’s still often used and I just haven’t noticed it.

By the way, the books in the photos have been sitting in these piles for weeks, waiting to be taken to the Salvation Army. Of those pictured, I recommend The Alienist and The Blind Assassin (actually barely cropped out of the pictures) as good summer reads.

This post is a reminder to everyone not to be fooled by pretty packaging.

I picked up this little number the other day in our downstairs convenience store because of its matte, minty-green wrapper, its eco-friendly aura, and because I was hungry.

I don’t claim to be an energy bar connoisseur, but this had to be the worst thing I had tasted in a long time. It tasted like someone had taken the fig filling from of a Fig Newton and left it out to dry in the sun for a couple days, then marinated it overnight in alfalfa sprout juice, then sprinkled it with mild onion powder, then added molasses so that they could call it “chocolate chip”. And it got turned completely black somewhere along the way too. But you’ll notice on the package that not one drop of gluten went into the making of this energy bar – THANK GOD. (By the way, I just found the wrapper again in the trash and looked over the real ingredients – they’re way worse than my make-em-up scenario, if you can believe that. But hey, no gluten!)

I’ll never make that mistake again. If I can convince just one other person to never try this energy bar, then it will all have been worth it.

Now here is a bar that I can really get behind:

Maybe the Nature’s Path Granola Bar isn’t an “energy bar” in the purest sense, but unlike the aforementioned scam, it’s edible. And you’ll notice that this one is wheat free. Thank God.

This little knit was inspired by the plastic thing that floats in your toilet tank.

It’s not really an anteater, or an elephant. I don’t know what it is, so it has no name.

Would you like to give it a name? Would you like it to be the free pattern for June?