Too Spooky (I'm Not Ready for Halloween Yet)

I was very troubled tonight to see a house with its yard fully decorated for Halloween. It's more than seven weeks to Halloween! I was driving, so I couldn't study it completely, though I did make out graves and at least one full-size scarecrow figure, but there was a lot more. I thought about going back with my camera to take a picture, but does anyone want to see that on September tenth?

Yet more troubling is that suddenly, the days are shorter. There is no longer sun at my breakfast table, and it's darker earlier. So suddenly, I swear! I truly enjoy autumn, with the crispness to the air, the color in the leaves and the crunch of them underfoot, the taste of apples, and of course the return of hockey season (training camp starts Friday!), but as for what it portends, the season of cold and dark, not so much that part.

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But let me not depress myself. Time for some Q&A! Recent comments have raised a few questions, and let's see if I have any answers:

About the Mazda issue, I haven't talked to the guy yet. I tried calling on Saturday, and he had left for the day. I asked the Young Person who answered the phone what his regular hours were, if he had them, thinking that I would like to know when I would have a hope of reaching him, and after telling me that he is the Customer Service Manager (which I knew, and hi, I'm a customer), she said that he usually comes in around 7A.M. (ugh). Since I am not a morning person, I'd rather not call him before my brain is functioning, so I asked what time he leaves, thinking I could call him after I leave work.

She said she wasn't sure she should give out his schedule. What are they worried about, do you think? I found that rather odd, and even if she thought so it was hardly good customer service to say so outright, but then it hardly surprises me to receive further poor service from them. Certainly, I don't even really want to talk to him that much: he called me. However, I am faintly curious to find out what he'll say, so I guess I'll try to call him on my lunch break. Maybe tomorrow; we'll see.

About the square, I have washed it and tried to get it to want to be bigger, and it really wants to be a nine-inch square, not a ten-inch square. (I would knit a square with a backbone, so to speak, wouldn't I?) On the plus side, Ms. K says send it along, she'll put more of a border around it to make it play nicely with the others. In the words of the South, bless her heart.

Korinthe, the picture you asked about is of Chinese lanterns (thank you, Leslie and Kali!). Pretty, aren't they?

Amy asked how I "earned" my MacGyver (Level One) badge from Cast On. I thought it was funny, actually, that I had done just what they used as an example:

The recipient must demonstrate clever use of a non-knitting tool in a knitting-related scenario. For instance, recipient has used paper clips as stitch markers, or successfully whittled and then utilized bamboo skewers as dpns.

The first one, the first one! I've used paper clips as stitch markers. I've also used my finger as a ruler, which I think would count, don't you? Although, in a very real sense, fingers are the ultimate knitting tool. But they aren't rulers, now are they?

Reading that over, I come to the inarguable conclusion that it's time to finish up here. Anyone who clinches an argument with herself by stating triumphantly that fingers aren't rulers should probably have been in bed a while ago. Night!

Finally, Nantucket Garden Photos

Well, garden photos of my trip to Nantucket are what I promised, and here we are at last! These are mostly of my cousin's garden, but some are around the island, and true to form, I generally don't know what the flowers are, but aren't they lovely?



She grows grapes, and puts something around them in hopes of keeping the birds off. I thought it looked neat.




Extreme close-up. In my family we call this a wallpaper shot.




There were hydrangeas everywhere, which I had heard about.


And look who I found sunning himself for the camera:


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In knitting news, I have finished the square for Ms. K, and I washed and blocked it last night, and it looks good (photo is pre-washing):


but it's 9 by 9, not 10 by 10.

On the other hand, it doesn't have the black border yet. Would a half-inch border be too much? Should I just make another, bigger one?

I'm so much better at items where it doesn't really matter what size the pieces finish up as. If there's such a thing as a free-form knitter, that's me. This should be so simple, knit a ten-inch square, yet here I am on my second try and it's still not right. Ugh.

No time to worry at it today. But: weigh in, would you, on what I should do?

Flowery Friday

It's hard to post much, or seriously, with a cat pressed over one arm. Let's see if I can add some photos without disturbing His Highness too badly. Pretty flowers for the nice readers...





Okay, I realize that one's not a flower, but how often do you find a dragonfly ready for its close-up?

Well, How About That?

I turned on my phone when I left work tonight, and guess who I had a message from?

Liberty Mazda.

He'd like me to return his call. I didn't do so tonight, since my day had had Enough Already (primarily the annual trip to the gynecologist, which is right near the top of my list of all-time least-favorite things to do), but maybe tomorrow.

I was honestly rather surprised that they called. You?

Random Tuesday

Note to the driver two cars ahead of me tonight getting onto 93: if your phone call was that important, you should be getting off the highway, not on. Merging onto 93 at 35 miles per hour is practically suicidal. The speed limit is 65, and you should be doing close to that by the time you get on the road if you want to survive. Boston drivers have their reputation for a reason, sir. Thank you.

Now, on to the good news. Tomorrow night, I do not expect to be posting, because I have an extremely important prior engagement playing with babies I mean helping my friend care for her twins. Yay, she believed me when I said please call me I want to help! So unless there's a change of plans, you know where I'll be, or rather where I won't be tomorrow.

I hope everyone enjoyed their Labor Day weekends. Other than being caught off guard by a bocce tournament (now there's something you don't hear every day), I had a really good weekend. I got a bunch of stuff done (not everything, but I had a pretty ambitious list), and did a bunch of relaxing and had fun too. It's always hard to go back to work after a long weekend, isn't it? It has nothing to do with how you like your job; you just get out of the groove.

The weather was lovely here over the weekend, too, although you can tell we're heading into Fall. The nights are cooler, and the leaves are just starting to change.


For that matter, a couple of weeks ago, I saw Halloween candy in the stores, so can Autumn be far behind?

letter to Mazda

You remember the story of how I hate the Mazda dealership where I got my car, right? And how you shouldn't go there (remember, this is Liberty Mazda in Wakefield), and tell your friends not to go there, etcetera, etcetera?

Well, I did finally write them a letter, just to let them know why I won't be coming back. At first I wrote a long, detailed, every-single-thing letter, but then I decided no, let's just hit the highlights. To be honest, based on their track record, I wouldn't be surprised to get no response at all, so who knows if they'll even read this. Why waste time or paper? So I summarized. This is what I sent them.

***************************************************

Service Manager
Liberty Mazda
81 Bay State Rd.
Wakefield, MA 01880

Every time I have come in for service, I have received a letter afterward, claiming you want to know if I am less than perfectly satisfied with the service I received. I am not sure I believe you, considering the continued mediocrity of your service, but I am going to try once final time to get through to you. Do you want to know why I hate your dealership and your service department, why I deeply regret buying a car from you, why I plan never to return, and why I am telling everyone I know and people I don't know to avoid you at all costs?

It was bad enough on my first visit, for the inspection after buying the car, when I arrived to pick it up and they couldn't find the car for half an hour.

It was bad enough when my first oil change took three hours.

It was bad enough when I had an actual automotive problem, and instead of giving me a loaner so that I could go to work while they diagnosed the problem, they made me wait for two hours while they tried to diagnose the problem first. It was bad enough when it turned out that they hadn't fixed the problem, so it happened again, and I had to bring the car back in. And it was bad enough when it turned out that the problem was caused by the installation of the security system in the first place.

But all these incidents have been impersonal, problems with an entity, not with the people within. Those incidents only made me consider not returning. The final straw was the condescending, sneering attitude of one of your employees as he "helped" me on Saturday, July 28th. He "helped" me realize that I never want to deal with that attitude again, in fact. While I will return if the part that he "fixed" breaks again, I otherwise will not be coming back, and I am writing to you on the off-chance that you care at all about the loss of a customer. Judging by your attitude, I doubt that you do, but perhaps as you lose more and more customers, you will come to realize that people do have a choice, and when you treat them like idiots, like they are bothering you, they will be more than happy to take their business elsewhere.

Sincerely,

***************************************************

You realize now I have to find a mechanic. I'm sure I'm already overdue for an oil change, if not more. That damned to-do list is never going to shrink. Depressing thought. I push it away from this otherwise pleasant weekend. The cat on my forearm chases it away. So there.

Weekend Update, Knitting Style

Had a nice day yesterday. Pan is still not over his "you must pour love into me, more, more" thing, and did a lot of lap-requesting, but cat-cuddling was on my list of things to do, so that worked out pretty well. I also slept in, went to my doctor's appointment, got to the post office, and went to the movies with friends, so that plus lots of lolling about equals quite a good day. Now here I am facing another day of attempting to balance getting things done and relaxing, and we'll see how I do. So far, so good.

I just gave the boys some of the dried catnip from last year's garden, and they're now beating each other up (aggression [and affection, interestingly] are frequent side effects). You'd never think that they usually get along:


On to knitting! I have re-started the slanting stripes scarf that I frogged (or made string, in the excellent words of Amy's son) for its distressing tendency to tube. (I don't seem to have a picture of that, sorry. Take my word for it: not nice.) Adding four stitches of garter to either side has stopped it from curling in, and I started with a few plain rows as well, which also seems to have helped somewhat. I'm still a little bitter about the photo in the book, which has to have been severely doctored, unless the yarn they used made a drastic difference, or was heavily blocked. I should try to let go of this, though, eh? Herewith, the front:


And the back, which charms me almost as much, since instead of stripes I see circles, and how did that happen?


Next, the astute reader might notice that I haven't mentioned the Second Sock in a while. It is actually 99% done.

No, not 100%.

I was kitchnering the toe on the ferry to Nantucket when an errant breeze made a snatch for the pattern, and I instinctively grabbed at it, hugging the knitting to my chest to do so. (Had I been thinking, I would have let the damned pattern go, but as I say, instinct.) The last four stitches came off the needles, and I have to find them again (the stitches, not the needles) to finish the toe. I wasn't going to try this on a heaving boat (it wasn't heaving that much to a normal person, but I'm not so good on boats; I have to be where I can see the motion or my stomach gets rather unhappy with me, which is why I was out where there are breezes, in case you're wondering), so I gently tucked it away. I have had a busy few weeks, and have not felt ready to tackle this since then. It looks sock-like, though, right?


Maybe 99.5%?

Sigh. So close.

Then, I started a square last night for Ms. K's blankets for the miners' family's in Utah, but due to a miscalculation, I have to start over (making a simple 10-inch square is only simple if you can make something close to ten inches). It will be a quick knit, though, once I get closer to size.



The yarn color didn't come close, silly camera. It's a sort of dark plum. We'll try again when we have more to photograph. Hopefully with a ruler showing it's really close to ten inches. I do dream, don't I?

And actually, I have started and finished a project in August, how about that? So fast I didn't photograph it, zoom! But it's very similar to something I made for myself last year, so you can time-travel to see that. I made a shawl for my friend's birthday, like the one I made for myself. There's the in-progress post photo, and the slightly blurry finished shot. It's a nice, light, open-looking piece, and since she liked the one I made myself, I could be pretty sure she would like hers, which she did. Yay! It's nice to be appreciated.

Thus endeth the lesson for today. Except to say, long way to go yet, oh Ravelry:

• You signed up on August 22, 2007
• You are #27720 on the list.
• 16535 people are ahead of you in line.
• 2638 people are behind you in line.
• 36% of the list has been invited so far

Not the only one

I thought that I was looking forward to the miracle that is Four Days Off, but judging by the Limpets* tonight, the boys are well and truly overdue for some advanced kitty maintenance. I've been reading this evening, and the cats have been on my lap, off my lap, my turn, I was here first, but Mo-om, up, down, over, under, around, and through. I am about worn out with them! Even now, I am computing with a cat draped over one arm, which is ... challenging, but we persevere. Right? By Tuesday morning, they should be fully recharged, and ready for me to go back to work.

*I'm starting to feel like the safe place in tag; they haven't been off me for more than about a minute all evening. Thank heavens for the central air conditioning; it was over 90 today, and without it, the fur and the sticky would be bad...

Some things that I plan to do before then:

• sleep late every day, you betcha
• clean up around here, or what my family calls "tide the house"*
• go to the movies tomorrow night (Becoming Jane)
  
• one doctor's appointment
• post office
• refill Pan's pills
• grocery store
• upload Nantucket photos to share with my family
• blog Nantucket garden photos (I didn't forget!)
  
• cookout on Monday (I'll be spectating at bocce, though)
• make pesto; I picked more basil today
  

*When my parents were in China some years ago, they ran across a display in a park somewhere that was all about Snow White, only due to a translation confusion, she was Princess Whitesnow, who "tides the house" for the seven dwarfs. The expression caught on in my family, as you might imagine.

Yawn and Meow, to quote everyone here. Good night!

If I didn't feel old before

Thanks, AARP! Leave me alone now!

Yes, AARP is trying to get me to join again. This is the third time in my life they've sent me a membership card. For the record, I turn 39 in October. Of course, the first time they tried, I was about 25, so they obviously don't take the "R" too seriously, unless I'm mistaken: isn't it the American Association of Retired Persons? Don't you have to be, if not retired, at least 50?

I believe so. I am sending back their letter and card, in their own postage-paid envelope, with the following note:

This is the third time you have tried to get me to join AARP, and I don't even turn 40 until next year. You need to get a grip, and do a better job of finding prospect lists. Leave me alone for at least ten years!

I have absolutely no confidence that this will have the slightest effect, but writing it made me feel better. Some days, it's the little battles, right?

What I really need

Aside from sleep, and someone to explain to me how if I ignore my to-do list, it grows, and if I tackle my to-do list, it grows (because I wasn't all that good at science, but I'm pretty sure that contravenes a law of physics or something), what I really need is ... minions.

It would solve so many problems.

It came to me in a catalog. Minions would be even better than sherpas, don't you think? Catalogs provide solutions to so many problems, problems you didn't even know you had.

I think I'd only want a few:

• housekeeper
• cook
• shopper (for things like groceries, not for fun stuff)
• errand-runner
  
• bookkeeper

Can you think of others?

(Oh, wait, there is one more thing. Sometimes we need a drop-down court photographer, for when the cats are being particularly cute on my lap. Think I can get one of those, too?)

A Cat in Nantucket

My cousin in Nantucket has two cats. One was camera-shy, but the other ... well, she refused to let me and my camera deflect her from her chosen course, basically. Saturday morning, she slept in Her Spot:


Very comfortable, thank you.


Why, yes, I can stretch my paws out more.


I tuck the nose between the paws and ignore you.


I am not either about to fall. I scorn you.


Believe it or not. (She wasn't, either. She slept like that for a while, and I never saw her slip.)


Are all cats contortionists?


Up at last. Cat forms part of a domestic exterior.


Are you ignoring how cute I am? How can you?


I'm so cute! Lookit!

raveled

Only last week, I was telling Stacey at my local stitch and bitch that I hadn't signed up for Ravelry* because although it sounds like quite a cool thing for knitters (and other fiber artists, keep your stitches on), I was leery of another time sink, which I need in my life like a hole in the head.

*What is Ravelry? Oh, you're not a knitter/crocheter/spinner/fiber-person? Or you don't read knit blogs (other than this one)? Go here and read about the latest craze in knit-blog-land.

However.

I was reading a blog post at Yarn-A-Go-Go, where she described a use of Ravelry I had heard about but hadn't really thought through: you can look up a specific pattern and see other people who are working on it, how they're doing, what it looks like, modifications they've made, etcetera. (She looked at a pattern she had dismissed for herself because it looked so good on a smaller friend, she thought it wouldn't suit her, until she saw that it also looked good on larger people.)

Hmm. You can do that on Ravelry.

And I thought about sitting at Stitch and Bitch and watching another woman making the Ruffles scarf that I had made before, only she used a much lighter yarn, and the effect was really different, and I liked it both ways, and I wouldn't have thought of that. And maybe on Ravelry, I could look up that pattern and see people who made it in two colors, and find out how, because I never did find a blogger that explained that, last year, and I couldn't get the color switch to go right when I tried it.

Hmmm hmmm.

Plus, I heard that there's this regional aspect to it, that there are groups forming from it: local people who blog and knit, that sounds like people I would have things in common with, eh? Three things, anyway.

Hmmmm.

I know that they're beta testing, so you sign up and wait to be called. I did think about signing up when I first heard about it, but just wasn't sure...

Now, I give in. I signed up, poked around the front of the site a little, signed up for the Ravelry News blog in my Google Reader, and saw that I could check the status of my invitation (I love that the address for that page is /antsy don't you?). This is maybe five minutes after I signed up.

Found you!

• You signed up on Today
• You are #27720 on the list.
• 17774 people are ahead of you in line.
• 3 people are behind you in line.
• 34% of the list has been invited so far

Three other people have signed up already? In five minutes?

Wow.

Except, that's nothing. I checked again tonight, and now the numbers are:

• 17672 people are ahead of you in line.
• 176 people are behind you in line.
• 35% of the list has been invited so far

These people are moving. No wonder the Yarn Harlot talks about the power of knitters, that we're a force to be reckoned with. This may turn out to be quite interesting. Further updates as events warrant.

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While we're talking about yarn, shall we look at what Nantucket showed me?

I didn't go much out of my way, so this is what we kind of fell across. There was one store in town (and I'm sorry, but I forgot the name) that had some needle craft supplies but mostly clothing (really expensive clothing), including a child's sweater almost exactly like the ones I just made for the twins, only with the word Nantucket in a contrasting color across the front. Not that I don't understand the appeal of that, in Nantucket, and yes it is Season, but still isn't $98 a bit much? Anyone?

On one wall, though, we had this:


Pretty! And there was also some very soft pretty yarn with this tag:



Can this be true? Mothproofed? This falls into my "learn something new every day" category. Read all about it!

Later we stopped in at the real yarn store on the Island, Sheep to Shore (I'm not saying that it's the only one, because I don't know that it is; just that the store that I saw that had yarn mostly carried other things, but this was a Yarn Store).


I wonder why so many yarn stores do the punny names. Anyone have a theory?

Oh, you want to know about the store? It's really nice. The woman there was very pleasant (even though we came in with a three-year-old, which would have been a turn-off to some), and they had a wide selection of some lovely yarns:



I managed not to buy, because they were plenty expensive, and I'm trying to knit what I have right now. I have quite a few projects in mind from my stash, after all, and just because I'm madly tempted by some perfectly lovely new yarn does not mean I should overlook three key facts:

• it's $44 a skein ($28 for the "cheaper" stuff I liked)
  
• I have nothing in mind to make with it
• I just spent plenty of money getting to Nantucket, and since money is already tight right now, I really should let that be enough reasons
  

It was actually fun to look at and fondle the yarn, and only hurt a bit to leave without it. I'll go back when I win the lottery.

Right?

Just say yes.

This Is Nantucket, For Real Now

Because 1, Nantucket is very photogenic; 2, people with addictive personalities and digital cameras with nice large-capacity cards don't mix; and 3, it's rather late and I'm just getting in and getting uploading after spending the evening playing with almost two-week-old babies*, I'm going to do the Nantucket overview (with lots of photos!), but leave the gardens, the cats, and the yarn (you knew there was yarn, right? [only photographed, I promise]) for other days. And away we go!

*If I can convince my friends that I enjoy holding the babies, and am not just doing it to do them a favor, the amount of time I spend doing other things, like blogging, may decrease. For some reason, they don't quite seem to believe me. I'll have to work on convincing them.

Isn't Nantucket ridiculously New Englandy?


Just too much for words.


Cobblestone streets and everything.


I love this car, but is the license plate meant to be a lecture?


It seems a little rude.


This is nice, though.


You've got to love the dock. Some of the boats were killer, gleaming wood and all. Staff of thousands, no doubt. Of course I could live like that, if I chose (cough, cough).


Since I took the ferry in Friday night and left late Sunday, I'm glad to have gone to the dock area Saturday to see what it looked like in the daylight. You wouldn't want to miss this, you know?


And although it wasn't so much beach weather, at least not lay-out on the beach weather (chilly breezes), we did see beaches, and they were gorgeous.


I also loved the look of this little lane, in Sconset.


Some of these settings could be a million other places, couldn't they? So lovely.




And as the sun sinks slowly, etcetera, we ponder that quintessential t-shirt wisdom ...


At least, it's on the t-shirt my cousin gave me, "now that you know the way"...