People Who Should be Poked with Knitting Needles

I usually try to keep this blog upbeat, but today it is a good thing I knit as I did not have a calm day.  The city is doing road repair work on my street and is tearing up my yard and my favorite tree which they refuse to replace or to compensate me for.  That is bad enough, but when I am having a meeting with the city attorney and the CE people to discuss all this the LDS (Mormon) neighbor comes over and they all start having a big discussion about what they did in Mormon church.  It was like male Relief Society or something.  Once they began to talk it was like I WASN"T EVEN THERE!!  And they were all standing in my driveway.  I was shocked.  I haven't been treated this badly by Mormons in over 15 years.  I made some sort of comment about this not being a church meeting, which they ignored and went on talking.  So I went over and sat on my porch.  They talked for at least another 20 minutes then left without another word to me.  Some of this conversation involved discussing my problems with the nosy neighbor (I could tell by the gestures, looks, and so on.)  I am still trying to figure out why the city people, who are supposed to be professional, thought it was appropriate to share my problems with the nosy neighbor.   I don't care if they go to chuch together, it was still none of his business and he shouldn't have been there.  I think the gyst of this is that the Mormon neighbor probably got whatever he needed from the Mormon city people but the non-Mormon person, being me, was ignored and didn't even get to finish what was supposed to be a professional business meeting.  I'm also sure that by tomorrow every Mormon member in this neighborhood will know everything about my meeting with the city, which should have remained reasonably private.  One of the workers on the outskirts of the group did come over and appologize though.  He turned out to be the only non-Mormon in the bunch.  I feel violated in more ways than one.  I'm pretty sure they just trampled all over my civil rights.  I hope some church lady leaves some really sharp Addi size 1s in their pew this Sunday.  They all deserve it.

Out, Bad Knitting!

Sometimes there are things in your life that no longer serve a useful purpose and those things need to move on.  I always like to start my new year by thinking about those things and moving them on to their new purpose.  So, for this post I have a confession to make.  Last year I knit a really UGLY sweater.  I worked on it off and on most of the year and even though there was this little niggling thought in the back of my mind that things weren’t going to turn out well I just kept right on knitting.  The reasoning behind this is that the yarn was Noro.  The same Noro that makes such beautiful multi-colored yarns.  But unfortunately it was not the same Noro that I love with wild abandon.  The Noro yarn in this ugly project will still be ugly even if its new purpose is to once again be a ball of yarn.  That is because it is ugly yarn. I have finally admitted it is ugly yarn.  Noro.  Unbelievable but true.  Fortunately I bought the yarn on sale.

I didn’t have a lot of yarn and it was a summery yarn, so I knit this tank.  (It looks better in the photo than in reality and its pretty ugly in this photo.)  When the tank was finally completed I was hoping that the addition of a colored border would somehow help it out, so I crocheted around it with some left-over mystery yarn.  Not much better.  I hate it.  I have kept it around for several months now, but it has not somehow magically improved.  I am going to get rid of it, Noro and all. 

I am now working on a nice wooly vest. 

Knitter's Nirvana has been on the Road

For reasons unknown to any of us here at Knitter’s Nirvana, we have been on a big darn road trip.  We do this every now and then, and it is not always a good thing, as we are always lost.  Nevertheless, we went from our home in Northern Utah to Key West, and actually made it back again, although it took us about six weeks.  This time we didn’t go through any states unintentionally, which is a first for us.  Also all the yarn shops were hiding, so the only yarn purchased was on the second day or our journey at Cameron Trading Post in Northern Arizona.  This is a trading post in the desert on the edge of a Native American nation – I can’t remember which nation.   It’s a really great trading post with a good selection of Native American products.   I always find it quite amusing as it is a big stop-off point for tour buses en route to the Grand Canyon which usually means hoards of Japanese tourists wearing dress-up clothes, hospital masks and lots of cameras.  They take pictures of everything and don’t even ask first which is a bit disconcerting.  One time I found a masked woman in high heels and teeny tiny shorts taking a picture of my license plate.  I don’t get it.

Anyway, there is always a shopping cart full of yarn back in the deli.  I don’t get that either, but nonetheless, it is always there.  It’s a lightly spun heavy worsted weight wool, with some lanolin left in.    I don’t know if it’s something that is made locally or what, but the skeins have little tags on them with a date and a color number.  The red one says Russet B. Sheep.   It’s a bit on the scratchy side, but I think it will make great mittens or something for this winter.

It's been a Long Long Year

It's been over a year since I last posted.  Overall I've had a really bad year.  First, I had a job I really loved and the position was moved to another office.  It turned out to be a very bad move for me - the new management was absolutely horrible.   I'm not going to go into all the details here, but I worked for the government, and because of the government rules it's very hard to deal with bad mangement once they're in place.  Employees don't have many options, there's a very definate good old boy network still firmly entrenched, and the bunch of managers I worked with just plain have no integrity.   Most of the other people I worked with were really wonderful good people (except for the one that's having the office affair).  I had alot of good friends there that I won't see much anymore and I'm going to miss them alot.  I finally decided that I had enough of the entire thing - and since I was in a position to do something else - I retired. I've been retired for an entire week as of today.  So far I'm enjoing it tremendously.

The worst thing that happened this year though, was that our basset, Shakespeare, got very ill and died.  He had been going downhill for quite some time and was finally diagnosed with lung cancer.  He died in May, and I still miss him.  We have a new puppy whom we love, but of course it just isn't the same.

But on a good note- I've been trying to get a knitting design business going for years but I haven't really had time to do anything much about it.  Now that I'm retired from my first job (and I'll have a decent retirement income, plus good insurance) I can finally concentrate on doing something fun.  I'll be posting regularly from now on, and I'm usually much more cheerful!

Julia Child Makes Me Squeemish

We recently went to see Julie, Julia and also - I read the book. Julia Child makes me squeemish but I liked both the movie and the book. I thought they were funny but really - lots of gross dead stuff was trussed up, killed and eaten. Eeeech... Where do you even buy a dead duck? Do you just go out to the local pond and bop some poor little ducky on the head or what??? Then you defeather and gut him out and cover him in pie crust??? Sounds delicious. It's time for me to go off and do some knitting and be grateful for my hippie tree-hugging vegetarian life.

I've finally wrestled the keyboard away from my daughter and have time for a quick post. This is Alice. Normally she spends her time underneath a tablecloth attacking unwary pedestrians, muching on my bamboo knitting needles, terrorizing the dog, and otherwise creating havoc in the household. But those kinds of things do wear a girl down after a while. Guess it's time to buy a new plant.

Happiness

It's been forever since I've posted. Time just flies along when you're knitting , doesn't it? People like the Yarn Harlot who manage to post several times a week are just amazing to me. I don't know how they do it. It takes hours to come up with interesting stories and information to keep us all amused, not to mention all the time it takes to get good photos. I think about it every time I read one of their posts - it's so nice of them to spend that kind of time to keep all us other knitters amuzed. Unfortunately I'm turning out to be a better blog reader than blog poster.

But I have been doing some knitting and trying to get a few more patterns designed, written, photographed and printed. Along with my other fulltime job - I've been busy! This is a baby bootee pattern I'm working on called Small World. There are going to be three patterns in it - this one is called Happiness.