The Secret's Out!

Since my husband is on a plane somewhere (safely) over the ocean right now, far away from internet access to this blog, I can tell you a little story without ruining a surprise.

See, he's been in Iraq for the past 100 days. So everything I went through, he had to go through by e-mail. It was not an easy summer! For security reasons (mine, and national) we didn't want to be too open about his absence, but his plane lands in DC this afternoon, so right now I should be cleaning the house so there's a path for him to walk when he gets home. I'll go to pick him up at the airport, then we're taking a little time together for a few days, and then I'm off to the KR Retreat, which will allow him some time with his son alone, so it's very good timing.

I decided I wanted to stock the fridge for his return home, and so I've baked him a loaf of my jalapeno bread that he likes so much, and bought him some good chili that will stay well in the fridge for a few days, and I'd been hoping to get him a case of his favorite beer. Well, that favorite beer is tough to find, since it's not sold further north than here. Fortunately, here isn't further north than here, so it is available, if you're willing to do a search. Which for beer, I am not, but for my husband, I am.

So I called several liquor stores, and found one last week that is very close to work. When I asked "Do you have Shiner Bock?" they said "Yup!" and so I went in on my lunch break.... and couldn't find any. So I asked someone, who said "Yup, we've got it, the truck's coming in this afternoon."

Huh.

See, to me, that doesn't mean they have it, what with the truck's impending arrival still being a future event and all. So I said "if I call you tomorrow and ask if you have this beer, will you lie to me then too?"

He said "It wasn't a lie, I have no reason to lie to you."

I looked at my basket of Woodchuck and Scotch and said "I beg to differ on that."

By the time I got back to the office, I had hatched a plan, though.

If AC can manipulate the bosses into buying him a personal air conditioning unit, special toilet paper, and pretty much anything else he wants in the office, fine. But if he thinks he's the only one capable of a little manipulation in our office he's just plain wrong.

I worked up some watery eyes, walked into the icebox he calls the studio and said "I don't know what to do all I want is to buy this beer for my husband who's been overseas serving our country for so long and I miss him and I just want to get his favorite beer and they lied and told me they had it when they didn't and it's so hard to find this beer and I know there's a place in [your hometown] that sells it but I don't know how to get there and can you believe this horrible liquor store lied to me what am I going to do????"

In no time, AC was calling around and found a store in his hometown that sold and had it in stock, and he bought me a case on his way home from work that night. It was sitting under my desk the next morning (though he did insist that I send an e-mail to the boss to make sure it was fine that the exchange took place. I instead sent an e-mail explaining that we were not running a black market beer ring but if we were I'd cut him in on the profits if he kept his mouth shut. He agreed). The liquor store clerk even gave us a discount because AC mentioned that it was for someone over seas...

HA.

Well, that story may not be much, but it's gonna have to hold you. I'll be back next week with pictures (of the RETREAT, you sicko) but otherwise I'll be out of town without internet access.

For today, I'm putting Halloween movies in the DVD player and going through my stash for my annual Fright Fest (as in "Holy Hell how can I have all this yarn??") to decide what goes to the KR Swap Table.

Happy Halloween!!!!


(and this is just for Shelia:)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hours Spent Knitting: 16
Rows Completed (of 222): 32
Estimated Time of Completion: 111 hours

I was sitting in the doctor's waiting room today, and realized something. Something scary.

I was wearing this:

(the greens in the scarf do match the green in the trench coat, it's just a different fiber, so the color didn't come out as true on that)

and I was knitting this:

which is the second of the socks that Jane is forcing me to knit to see if it's self striping.

Which means I was sitting in the waiting room looking like this:


or, if you need a clearer picture, like this:


That is to say, I'm pretty sure this green thing is a certifiable disorder.

And in honor of my self-diagnosis, I leave you with a self-portrait:

Those of you who have Safeway stores near you, you may have seen the ads for their new line of soups. Believe these ads. They ARE that good. I have had exactly one that I didn't think was really spectacular (um... it was a fiesta chicken tortilla or something... not great, but not horrible) (oh, and I despise cooked mushrooms, so I haven't tried any of those). But most of the soups are really good, and you can pop 'em in the microwave for five minutes and have a huge, hearty meal.

Last week I had soup everyday, I think. In fact, I brought one (the crab chowder) into work to have there. I very cleverly packed a spoon into my tiny purse. And then forgot it.

And I mean completely forgot it. As in, was pissed off at myself all afternoon for not having a spoon. Until, upon getting ready to go home, I went to get my keys out of my purse and found the spoon. I threw the spoon in my desk drawer in anger, and stormed out. That'll show it.

So I came in today thinking "Hey - I've got that soup, I left the spoon there... I'm allll set." (does anyone else's thinking voice sometimes resemble a used card dealer in it's cockiness?)

And I can't find the spoon. It's in one of these damn drawers, probably nestled into one of the 47 thousand balls of yarn that get shoved back into the depths when a client comes in, but I can't find it.

So I go off, letting the spoon sit and snicker wherever it is. I don't need a spoon, who needs a stupid spoon?

I'll just sit here and drink my tea (off topic, but Arizona's Blueberry White Tea is really good. And MUCH better than the Lo-Carb Blueberry [non-white] Tea, which you might be tempted to try just to compare. Don't bother. The White Tea is much better)

And of course then I open my drawer, and apparently the spoon is feeling neglected, because it's been hiding under the 62 gazillion pink lids that are sitting in that drawer thinking about mailing themselves, and this time when I open the drawer it shifts them slightly so that its handle can be seen.

HA.

I'm off to nuke my soup before it outsmarts me too.

Dream Weaver

The following section is last night's weird, vivid dream. It involves waking and sleeping, so I don't want you to be confused - I will separate it out with ~~~ and everything between those marks is the dream, and all took place while I was actually asleep. Here we go:

~~~~~~~~~~
I was asleep, and Trevor was in his normal place at my feet. But for some reason he was bouncing and leaping and attacking something down there, and that woke me up. I sat up, and couldn't figure out what he was playing with. So I got up, went across the room, and turned on the light [IRL there is no main light switch, there was one here]. When I looked at the bed in the light, there were suddenly no sheets, just a bare mattress. On that bare mattress was a little hoard (herd? flock?) of ants. They didn't seem to be "coming from" anywhere - you know how there's normally a little train of ants leading to and fro' whatever has attracted their attention - nope, they were just all sitting there, focussing on... pasta. Several small shells of uncooked pasta, sitting on the bed. So I picked up the pasta, and the ants all clung together like a chain of paperclips, and Trevor followed me and together we watched them swirl down the toilet. Then we went back to bed, and went back to sleep
~~~~~~~~~~

And then I woke up.

See? Not a nightmare, not scary. Extremely vivid (I did leave out details that no one else - even the few of you who care enough to read that - would care about), and odd. And that was just one of the two dreams I had last night. And yes, my doctor knows about the sleeplessness, and damn me for trying to take a no-meds-except-as-a-last-resort stance on things because she wants to wait another week or two before giving me anything to help me sleep. Apparently we're going to wait until I just lapse into complete and total zombie-hood. Heck, it's Halloween season, I won't need a costume!

As an ammendment to yesterday's discussion, when I mentioned that I was getting "Every Rose Has It's Thorn" stuck in my head in certain rooms, I really did mean only those rooms. It's sort of like being at a house where there is a stereo playing in a room - not particularly loudly, just playing. So that when you open the door and enter the room, you can hear the stereo, but when you leave the room and close the door, you can't hear it anymore. When I walk into my bedroom, the song "Every Rose Has It's Thorn" begins playing in my head. When I leave the room, it stops. When I walk into the studio at the radio station, it begins. When I leave the studio, and I'm in any other room in the station, it's not there.

See that? My job to prove you sane continues.

Now, please discuss amongst yourselves: What does Maryland Sheep & Wool smell like? What does a bag of fleece smell like? Do you smell sheep? Grass? Festival food? People?

Blonde Roots

When you're on the radio, people always tell you that you look different than they expected. In fact, when I worked with Sharon, if the two of us were out, they would always think she was me and I was her. They always thought she would be taller, with dark hair. They always thought I was blonde. Every station I've worked at the listeners have always said "huh. I thought you'd be blonde."

I'm not sure if they meant that well or not.

At one of those stations, the one in the snow-belt of New York State, I worked part-time at a bookstore. I worked there for months without meeting the general manager, though she heard me on the radio every morning. That winter, I learned that the habit of locking the car door automatically, which is an understandable habit to get into when you grow up in the Baltimore area, and the process of starting your car to warm up and going back inside where it's above zero degrees, do not mix. In a three week time period, my morning partner had to drive to my house, get my spare car key, and come rescue me (ahem) THREE TIMES. One of these times I had to call the bookstore to tell them I was running late and the general manager answered the phone. When I explained what happened she laughed and said "Oh, for crying out loud, are you SURE you don't have blonde roots under that red hair???"

That time I'm pretty sure she didn't mean it in the best sense.

I was reminded of that today when I heard her voice echoing in my mind over something I did. I bought a book from Amazon - the NaNoWriMo book - and there's that free shipping thing that forces you at gunpoint to buy something else too, because it's cheaper to spend $26 than $14. So anyway, I had just been listening to the radio, and they were playing Gary Allan "Nothin' On But the Radio" and I like that song, and I really like Gary Allan, so I tossed the album See If I Care in my cart. Cuz it's cheaper that way. You know.

So the CD arrived and I looked at it. And why the picture of the CD on the website didn't look familiar, but the actual CD did look familiar, I don't know. But I thought, wait. do I have this already?....

Naaahhhhh... and I ripped off the plastic.

Then I got in my car this morning and Gary Allan's See If I Care fell into my lap. Literally. Yup, I already had it.

And now I have two.

Blonde roots, I tell ya.

So here's what I'm thinking. I promise I have not copied this CD. I have paid for it honestly (twice, in fact). So if you are interested in Gary Allan's See If I Care drop me an e-mail - I'll pay for shipping, you paypal me the $14 that Amazon charges, thereby saving you $4 or $12 shipping, depending on how you shop. Let me know.

Meanwhile I'm sitting here at 1 AM, wishing I had some pineapple juice since I'm pretty sure we already have scotch and then I could make a Dirty Sock. It might help me sleep.

Oh, you didn't know?

SallyJo (of the comments) decided that she wanted to knit bright yellow socks. For whatever reason, that's what she wanted, and I like SallyJo, and I want to make her happy, and I was having a nasty day at work, so I set about Monday afternoon playing on the web looking for bright yellow sock yarn for SallyJo, which is actually significantly more challenging than one would expect. However, in the process of typing in "Yellow Sock" into google, I discovered this and this. And so of course, in my duty to my friend, I mentioned these options to her (perhaps if she has enough Yellow Socks she won't feel the need to knit anymore yellow socks?) She told me that she had read a book that suggested trying to determine what you've given to the world each day, and perhaps what she gave to the world was the inspiration to search for knitting inspired alcoholic beverages.

There are worse things to give to the world.

And that Dirty Sock might help, since I'm still having those weird dreams, three weeks straight now, and have added to my band of merry neuroses hearing the song Every Rose Has It's Thorn in certain rooms. (remember that, Jen?) The refrain of it, to be specific, if that makes me slightly less crazy. For some reason, when I walk into my bedroom, I hear that song in my head. When I stayed in the B&B with Jen at the FFF, I heard it in the bathroom. And I hear it in the studio at work. But it's the bedroom that's most bothersome, because it's keeping me awake! I suppose it's better than the freaky dream option, but a gal's gotta sleep sometime, right?

It would seem that while SallyJo's gift to the world is knitting inspired alcoholic beverages, mine is to make the rest of you feel sane.

You're welcome.

What a Rare Mood I'm In...

On the way to my knitting class yesterday morning I noticed one of my tires was running pretty low. So I dropped sweet Norman off at Mr. Tire, where the service is always embarrassing, but they're within walking distance to my class, even wearing boots with heels as I was.

In class, I had a woman who wanted definites. She would ask me a question (then interupt frequently while I tried to answer) and expect the answer to be, for example, EVERY TIME you decrease, you must IMEDIATELY increase afterwords. You would NEVER increase first. EVER.

Sorry, kiddo, life and knitting ain't about the definites.

I then walked back to Mr. Tire, was reminded of their lovely and attentive service once again (sorry, should I have put a sarcasm alert there?) and then went home to get money so I could take it to the bank so the check for that brilliant service wouldn't bounce.

When I got there, I found Oscar's rope tied. When I say his rope, I mean the large coated string of several metal wires twined around each other for added strength. Oscar weighs about 50 pounds, we got the one that's supposed to be strong enough for a (I think) 100 pound dog. We might have gotten the 150 pound dog. This is a rope that certain little bossy ones couldn't even drag around the yard. My big non-bossy dog broke it. One of the neighbors managed to tie a faux-knot in it, and so my trip to the bank became a trip to Petco as well, for a rope that would hold a 150 lb dog or a 50 lb pitbull.

At Petco, I met Felix. Felix is a ... something... bird-of-some-kind-that-looked-like-a-lovebird-but-that's-not-what-his-mommy-said-when-I-asked. Felix was differently colored than the bird in the link, but was that size and had the same body and beak type - that kind of bird. I know very little about birds. I know more than the average person about cats and dogs, I can keep fish alive if they aren't going to die anyway (and with fish, they are) but birds, I know nothing. Except that chickens will drink scotch from a glass even when the vet says they won't. I've lived with chickens, and pet and carried them. But little birds that live in the house, I'm stumped. Which means therefore that I'm pretty fascinated with them. And since my latest in the now-three-weeks-straight-of-wild-n-crazy-dreams saga was about birds, Felix caught my attention. His mom said I could pet him, he disagreed. I reached slowly to pet him, and he stepped on my hand. So I reached my other hand to pet him, and he stepped over to that hand. When I tried to pet higher up on his body, I got a beaked. That is, a very gentle bite that if he'd had gums I would have said he gummed me, but being a bird, he beaked me. He stuck his so-ugly-it's-cute tongue out at me and beaked me several more times. I was informed this was not a sign of anger or displeasure, just a little aviary exploration. So Felix was cool.

On the way home from that little excursion, I stopped by the video store, where I met reason number 48 to graduate high school. I got the movies I wanted, and proceeded to stand in line. "Line" is really a relative term, since I was the only one there. Mr. Reason stood with his back to me, playing with a stapler. This was not me misinterpretting him stapling important documents that the losing of which could result in his termination. Unless he would be terminated for not making the stapler perform an elaborate stapler dance, complete with turns and splits. I don't know, maybe that's the case. I'm unaware of Blockbuster's employment guidelines. I clicked my heels on the floor. I cleared my throat. I said "excuse me?" When he finally meandered over, he looked at my movies and said "You aren't getting Batman?"
Um. Do I have Batman in this pile?
No, I saw it in the theater, and that was enough, thank you.
(with a snotty little tone he replied) "I guess you don't like comic book movies. Well, I really enjoyed it"
DUDE - what do you get commission if I rent Batman? I don't want Batman! Saw it! Not overly impressed! Back off!

I did however get some knitting done in front of the non-Batman movies I rented (which were so fabulous and memorable that now, less than 24 hours later, I can't remember what they were. I shoulda rented Batman)

In fact, what looked like this Sunday morning

now looks a lot more like this, but with a few more rows on down at the bottom that look vaguely like the tops of trees.

Happy Halloween!!!!

Yup. Two weeks early. But that's okay, I'm wishing you Happy Halloween anyway.

Why? Because what else would you do when you teach knitting part-time and the store that pays you says for the Fall Festival everyone is required to wear a costume?

After you grumbled for a bit, you would shout Happy Halloween and make this:


(and from another angle:
)

That's right - I'm going as a knitting basket! Donning my trusty "Life's a Stitch" tee from the Knitter's Review Boutique (which I thought was exactly the sort of shirt a Knitting Basket would pick) with my little spinning wheel pin at the front of the basket, I think it will be clear what I teach at the store, don't you think? (Yes, automechanics. What else?) So if you happen to come by the AC Moore and see a knitting basket sitting there knitting, say hi!

(there may or may not be additional modifications to the costume as I ponder and play for the next few hours. If there are, I'll try to capture them on film for Monday)

~~~~~~~~~~~

KC tagged me, and those are my husband's initials, so I can't let her down!

10 YEARS AGO
I was a junior in college with a double major in Theatre and Music and a minor in Education, taking double the normal courseload and involved in four choirs and several theatre productions on top of that. I participated in a January course of experimental theatre (a production which quickly became an annual tradition and was known as "Budget: Zero"). During this time there was a blizzard that shut down the entire town, and the dining hall refused to believe I was authorized to be on campus at the time, so they wouldn't let me in the dining hall. After living out of a vending machine for a solid week I hallucinated a flaming bush outside my dorm room window - on the second floor.

5 YEARS AGO
I started my first full-time on-air job on the afternoon shift of a station on the Eastern Shore of Delaware on September 11, 2000. I met Todd the first day, Sharon the second, and they are the first people ever that I kept in contact with after moving away. They were both in my wedding, I was in both of theirs. It took me a few weeks to find an apartment, so in the meantime I stayed with a friend of my father's mother's best friend's daughter. Honest. At the radio station I quickly learned that I am very popular on the air and very unpopular with management when I'm on the air. This is a trend that has continued through my radio career. I lived with my very precious calico Misha and my very precocious grey tabby kitten Trevor.

1 YEAR AGO
A newlywed of ten months, I lived with my husband, that precocious grey tabby Trevor, an eerily mature Norwegian Forest cat named Aslan and a class-clown pitbull named Oscar, near Baltimore. GB's son came to stay with us most weekends and we get along brilliantly. I was unhappy with my job and my home, but hoping something better will come along.

FIVE SNACKS
Green (or black) Olives, Klaussen pickles (yes, it's VERY brand specific), cheese, ice cream

FIVE SONGS I KNOW ALL THE WORDS TO (I am at a very unfair advantage, working in radio. I'm putting five - of many -favorites instead)
1.Walking on Sunshine - Katrina & the Waves
(GB and I actually walked up the aisle to this instead of Ode to Joy)
2.Let Me Entertain You - from "Gypsy"
3.Me & Bobby McGee - Janis Joplin
4.Hit Me With a Hot Note
5.Take Me or Leave Me - from "Rent"

FIVE THINGS I WOULD DO WITH $100 MILLION
1.Pay off all debts of mine and my husband's
2.Buy land and build a home on it
3.Pay back my parents for college and then the thousands of other dollars they've given me
4.Pay off my brother's mortgage, school loans, and other miscellaneous financial needs
5.Bank the rest

FIVE PLACES TO RUN AWAY TO
1. Scotland. Hands down. It's the only place I've ever really longed to visit. It probably takes up all five slots, but I'll give you others.
2. Bermuda. GB and I honeymooned there and I would love to go back for a longer time.
3. Italy
4. England & Ireland
5. Anyplace quiet and peaceful where I can be with my animals

FIVE THINGS I WOULD NEVER WEAR
1. a short-sleeved tee-shirt over a long-sleeved shirt
2. cargo pants (I don't need my legs to look fatter and lumpier)
3. real fur
4. leather underwear
5. anything edible

FIVE FAVORITE TV SHOWS
1. Sports Night (the sitcom)
2. Mad About You
3. M*A*S*H
4. Grey's Anatomy
5. Monk

FIVE BIGGEST JOYS
1. My animals
2. My husband
3. My friends
4. My private time
5. Synthroid

FIVE FAVORITE TOYS
1. My spinning wheel and fiber stash
2. My knitting and my yarn stash
3. My computer and the internet (without which I wouldn't have my most cherished friends)
4. My digital camera
5. My books

FIVE PEOPLE TO PASS THIS ON TO
David-poo
Bess
Anj
Jane
Jen

I've mentioned that I have the world's worst mailman, right? I was not, in fact, just whistling a tune resembling "Dixie". This is what I saw when I checked mail this weekend.

Notice all the room around the balls of mail. Imagine how flat and lovely that pile could have been, had he not taken to making snowballs from my mail.


Now try to imagine what picture is on this postcard I received. (This may or may not have been his fault, I will fully admit. The rest of the postcard is glued on the back of one of my bills, so it could be Sprint's fault)


Once I unfolded most of my mail, my mother came over to help me plant bulbs (this also involved moving an azalea, which looks very nice where it is now, and will hopefully flourish, but is not something I plan on undertaking again soon. Those puppies are heavy!) We put down some pachysandra and blue campanula as well, and some lovely fancy daffodil bulbs. We picked up this

A baby snake, that both of us thought was a very large worm at first glance! He's very cute, and we took some great care in digging until we could catch him and move him out of the way of the shovels. If you look veeerrrry closely, you can see his little tongue sniffing us out!


~~~

EDIT:
Don't think it was a copperhead (though I did insist, even animal whisperer that I am, that we hold it only with gloves on, just in case). Baby copperheads usually have a bright yellow tipped tail - and his tail is the same as the rest of him. He also didn't have the strong markings along the back that adult copperheads do (although I suppose it could be paler because he's so young) - more spotted than banded. This is a picture of a baby copperhead (note the dark bands & yellow tail)

See? Not likely a match...

On the way home from something vaguely work-related today, I stopped by a bookstore. And there, something fell into my basket. Something that, frankly, if you don't have it yourself, I suggest you do some deep soul-searching to figure out why. It was this:

Jackie French's Pete the Sheep-Sheep

It's about a sheep (named Pete, which is fortunate, considering the title) who does the work of a sheep-dog. So he's a sheep-sheep. And it's really, really, cute. Plus, there's the added benefit of being able to yell "sheep sheep!" gleefully at all the other cars on the road. You know. If you were into that sort of thing.

Ahem.

All day long it rained and rained - hard, loud, driving rain. Because of that, Oscar didn't get a whole lot of time outside to take care of certain doggie-business. I would open the door, he would run to the nearest tree (approximately two yards), pee, and run back inside. We did this twice. Then I had that vaguely work-related thing, so he got put in his room for a solid five hours. When I got home (and shouted "sheep sheep!" at the cats) I went quickly to his room, leaving the front door open behind me, and opened his bedroom door. For some reason, it didn't occur to me that a pitbull hearing nature's call might be slightly faster than I am in my girly heels. He is faster. A lot. So you know what this is?


That is a very proud pitbull.

And he should be.

After whipping past me so fast the cats didn't have any time to shout "sheep sheep!" at him (which they thought would have been great fun) and vaulting over the couch (running around it wastes precious time) Oscar lunged to the open front door and...

stopped.

He sort of sat, sort of squirmed, sort of wriggled, but he didn't cross the threshold. He waited for me to attach his leash and walk him outside.

Extra treats for Oscar tonight.

Special Delivery!

For no particular reason, these arrived for me at work yesterday


What? You don't think someone mailed me a cat ass?

You're right. But this was the first about about 47 photos taken of similarly flattering view. In my house, when you put something on the floor to get the best light and background, you have to expect the bomb cats to get extra suspicious. There were also photos that looked like the flowers were trying to run from the bomb sniffing cat, but Amy has the corner on "too exotic and mysterious to be captured on film" so we'll let them stay in your imagination.

I did actually get them delivered at work yesterday, and nearly every man I spoke to (who shares company with a woman) after the delivery said something akin to "crap! I forgot her birthday/anniversary/special day".... and when I told the UPS guy that it wasn't in fact any special day for me, he didn't believe me. Seems I got the last man who knows 2 dozen roses for no reason are reason enough.

~~~~~~~~

I've been having bizarre and extremely vivid dreams every night for the past week and a half.

I remember reading an article when I was in college that said (I feel like there's a dangling participle in there, but you know what I mean) that people in creative professions remembered dreams more often than less creative people. It said that you could consider yourself one who remembered dreams frequently if you woke up remembering 2 or 3 a month... I generally remember 2 or 3 a week.

But this past week or so, I've been remembering one or two a night. And they're VERY strange and extremely vivid. Vivid as in I could feel glass shatter around me, as in I remember what I said and what my exact thoughts were about what I said. I don't remember all of them later in the day, but I wake up still thinking about them.

In a few of them there's something minor that I could tie to Sharon - the glass shattering one was the windows being shot out of a public bus, and I did ride a bus when I went up for her funeral. Last night I dreamed she had to borrow my husband's bathrobe - I don't know why. But most of them don't have any obvious tie-ins. They're just weird (okay, dreaming that my dog peed on the walls of the White House might be a little more blatantly Freudian than some of the others).

But the dreaming and tossing and turning and waking has meant I haven't been sleeping well all week... I keep forgetting to take my synthroid, and my nails are breaking, and I've been moody and cold all week... I think I remembered it this morning, so hopefully I'll be able to get back on track soon....

~~~~~~~~

Oh, and the flowers?

How 'bout a better picture

I'm a Bad Bunny *

I'm sitting here, wanting to take a nap, or knit a sock, or a sweater, or clean the house, or pretty much do anything but work on this mess


But I can't. I have to work on that mess because life got away from me the summer and prevented me from working on those, and the recipient of those has been excruciatingly patient at the lack of receipt. And since I am unable to attend Rhinebeck this year, I have no more major weekend excursions this month, nothing major until KR Retreat time, so my goal is to finish this and three (maybe two) more like it before November 1st. I am allowed to crochet up the back and block after November 1, but all knitting must be done. Or else the project will go on far too long, and bring bad juju into my non sucky autumn.

But I had a ....ummm.... challenging knitting class this morning. A way-the-heck-out-there pregnant woman came in, saying she thinks it will be cheaper and easier to just knit her baby clothes rather than spend all that money buying them. I didn't laugh in her face. About four minutes into the class her cell phone rang, and it was her husband. Thinking it would be the standard "yes, we need kitty litter, great, thanks, whatever" phone call most civilized people make when they're interrupting. But no. They chattered on for a while, with her expecting me to show her what to do while she was listening to him. At one point she did apologize, explaining that her husband was in the Middle East and she didn't get a chance to talk to him much. Of course, I couldn't ask her to hang up after that, could I?

But then it turned into a yelling match. It would seem that the husband invited someone to stay with them who is not pulling his weight in bills around the house, and now the husband wants the wife to kick that someone out, but the wife doesn't feel that's morally right, and instead feels it is morally right to get into a transcontinental screaming match during my knitting class. After sometime she finally left the room, leaving her knitting behind. She came back with ten minutes left and said "wow, that class went fast!' Uh-huh.

So now I'm tired and cranky and have a headache and this seductive little blonde cat is sitting her purring at me, batting his eyes and begging me to take him to bed for some serious cuddle time. And yet I have to work on the mess. So clearly, I'm doing what any responsible knit-blogger would do.

I'm blogging about the mess.

Which really isn't that much of a mess. That was just the back side, and only after being wrestled out from under the furry little rumps of various men in my life. It actually looks more like

which is obviously an improvement, if we're speaking exclusively about tangles.

So I guess I have to give up and go knit the mess now.




* Jennifer has two angora bunnies. The male is sweet, friendly, calm, and good with the kids. The female nips, and runs, and is much more hyper - as Jennifer says "she's a bad bunny." All weekend long when one of us would make a mistake we would say "ooohhhh... you're a baaad bunny..."

After a fun day chatting with knitters at the AC Moore Knitting Party, I got in the car and drove to chat with one special knitter. We stayed up too late talking in an adorable B&B (that will soon be no more, as the owners are retiring) and woke up too early and drove to the VA FFF Fairgrounds. Once there, I spent a vast majority of the day looking at this

drooling at the beauty, daydreaming in particular about that gorgeous leaf-green silk, and in general about siphoning the gas out of my car and selling it on the VA Black Market to buy out the entire booth. If only I drove an SUV instead of that damn practical, fuel-efficient Norman, it might have been worth it....

In the end, I came home with a loving memory of Otto Strauch spending an hour helping me unravel a tangle when I decided it would be quicker to just wind from the hank rather than ask Barbara to set up her swift. No, I don't know why I thought that, but I know it was an enjoyable tangle that eventually produced this


I came home with this silvery Romeldale

and this sock yarn

which don't count, because they aren't for me.

I came home with this merino

which doesn't count...
ummm....
because purple and yellow aren't my usual colors?

And despite being the one who constantly has to remind GB to put on sunblock, I also came home with this

which doesn't count, because last year the booth was in the middle, not on the end, so how was I to know I'd be taunting my scotch-irish heritage?

All in all, it was a very Not Sucky weekend.