Lovely drippy rainy day. All day. We need more of this, please - a couple weeks' worth should end the drought. And it was COOL. So cool - I don't think it got out of the 70s today. It was wonderful. It makes me think of fall and making soup and lighting my fireplace-candles (ooh, I should do that this evening, sort of a welcome-fall thing) and curling up under a quilt with a book, and wearing handknits, and pulling out my heavier skirts and getting to wear those again instead of the little thin cotton things I've got tired of this summer...

I'm sure there are people bitching about how it spoiled their Labor Day plans (which around here seem mostly to be Go Out to the Lake and Get Drunk - which is not a good combination, and some of you may have heard [it made national news] of the tragic accident on Lake Texoma between two cigarette boats. Apparently drinking was not involved there, but still - there are way to many people around here and in North Texas who buy it on a lake after having had too many beers.)

I spent a couple hours in the office working on research. (*Shrug.* I love my job. So Labor Day for me is just a "eh, one day I don't have classes" not a "Stick it in your EYE, bossman!" day for me.) Then I came home and sewed some on the quilt. All the blocks are in rows. I've put three rows together but sort of ran out of steam when I found one row was enough shorter that I'm going to have to trim up the whole thing before I can put on the borders. It won't be noticeable, but it was enough to annoy me into not wanting to do more just then.

I also don't like the pinning-intensive part of sewing, where you're attaching long, long strips to other long, long strips nearly as well as the funky-short-seam blockmaking part.

Then I knit on the Barley Sugar Column socks for a while. The gusset decrease part is now done; I've got almost one complete repeat of the pattern on the foot. One thing I've noticed is it's faaaaaaar easier to drop a purl stitch than a knit stitch when knitting in the round.

Oh - and I had to make a quick run to the mart of wal, because idiot me, I left the milk out on the table for many hours (got distracted after breakfast the other day) and it soured. Damn. And it was the expensive organic kind, too, which I'm drinking now because my sister-in-law the analytical chemist who is also not given to health-quackery will only drink organic milk - something about the chance of BGH or other hormones slipping through into the non-orgo stuff.

Anyway - remember months and months ago when I mentioned seeing Moonlight Mohair at Mart of Wal? And I presumed its presence there was basically doomed, because the sort of people here who shop at Mart of Wal won't pay $7 a skein for yarn, even good yarn?

I was right. It's marked down to $5 a ball. Being the impulsive hoardy sort I am, I bought the remaining six skeins of the purple color - that's about 450 yards or so, perhaps enough for a smallish shawl or a vest. Or a gift for a person who's a bit smaller than I am in size.

A couple of the other colors were already gone, so I guess I'm not the only vulture yarn opportunist in this town.

but I guess this means there's no longer any point in a quick swing down that aisle in the future in search of anything new. It's all furry plastic yarns or Red Heart. And while Red Heart has its uses, I just don't care for it.

And I also think knitting as an activity for the fad-addled and the fad-addled-wannabees (like those who market to Mart of Wal) is further on its way out; there was crochet stuff all over the place and less knitting stuff. But whatever. I can make it through even an extended yarn drought now.

What I should do? Go into my walk-in closet where I keep all the stuff, and set it up in attractive displays, and maybe even get one of those big cutout people (you know, the cardboard figures of movie stars that they use to advertise movies at the theater or the video store) to act as the "proprietor," and put in nice lighting and a sign and all and call it my own yarn shop. And then, when I feel the need to go "shopping," go back there and pick something off the shelf and fondle it and coo over it and go, "Oh, my! You have just enough balls in a dyelot for what I want to make!"

hahahahaha. I'm thinking maybe a Bette Davis cutout (she was a knitter, you know) if I could find one. Or Marilyn. (Indiana Jones would be more fun but I think he's a bit too butch for an imaginary knitting store. And yes, I've seen the famous Russell-Crowe Knitting shot and although Russell is delicious to look at, I've read too much about his jerk-y public behavior to want him in my imaginary knitting store.)




(I realize tone of voice doesn't convey in typed words. I am being funny here. I have not actually gone that far around the bend. Although it would be kind of fun to have a yarn-store-like setup for my stash yarn rather than having it in stacked rubbermaid boxes.)