Saturday, July 22, 2017

A Grand Day

I don't even know what iteration of A Grand Day Out this is - I have been going to Longview periodically since 2001 and as a meet-up with Laura since 2009 or so.

Anyway, it was a good day despite the sun's best efforts to cook us.

First stop: Stitches N Stuff. I forgot July was their 20% off sale (and the place was busy as a result).

I kept saying "I don't need any more sweater yarn" but then I saw the big tweedy aran yarn:

yarns!

I know I've made the joke before, but I like big skeins and I cannot lie. (Because there are ALMOST NO JOINS). This is something like 1520 yards, easily enough for a plain cardigan for me. I'm picturing something with raglan sleeves and a v-neck - almost a Mr. Rogers type cardigan. I am sure I have a pattern for one somewhere, or, it's probably something I could even bash up if I don't.

It's grey, with tiny flecks (the tweeds) of primary colors in it.

The other two yarns are sock yarns - beach botanicals (the darker one) and dancing leprechaun (the predominantly-green one). Probably will become socks but they also kind of go together so I MIGHT do a striped shawl or something instead.

I also bought some new cable needles because nearly all of mine have gone walkabout. These have embedded glitter (they are plastic). Embedded glitter makes everything better.

We went for lunch at Barron's (And I learned that, in fact, there is a Mr. Barron - and a Mrs. Barron, too - and their son, who actually now runs the place). It was Saturday brunch and I consider it always a good day when I can get an omelette. (Yes, I can make them myself but they're tricky enough to do right that I like it when someone else can make them).

And I bought a few things.

The elephant here is a bank. There is a groove in the upraised trunk where you set a coin, and it rolls down into the slot in the head. Sort of a very, very low-tech version of the old mechanical banks. I think my niece will get a kick out of it, and it's different enough she's unlikely to have one already - so I bought it ahead for her birthday in a few months. (The book came from the Books a Million and is also for her - she is a little Ellie Mae Clampett in training, very interested in "critters")

gifts

We also went to the Michael's there, where we found a monster.

A yarn monster. They had a bin of discounted yarn and Laura started to look in it (she is making a scrap afghan and wanted to see if there was anything good for a reasonable price) and there was this giant....spaghetti....ball of yarn in there. (I don't know if people just pawed through carelessly, if someone did it on purpose to be a butt, or if little kids got into it, but, yeah....it was bad).

We laughed over it a bit and then she called over one of the employees. And it wound up being a little bit like the yarn version of that "Concrete Buffer Gone Wild" video because they kept calling over more employees to try to deal with it. At one point one of the women said on her intercom thing, "Send over Sevastian and tell him to bring the scissors."

There wound up being four people working on it to try to free the rest of the yarn from it.

And they found another one - someone commented that it must have gained sentience in the night and started consuming more yarn to make a second one.

And I admit - I whoop-laughed (and had to walk down the aisle to get away) because I thought of "How many Micheal's employees does it take to untangle yarn" like the light-bulb jokes.

Laura wanted to adopt it for her scrap afghan, but they wouldn't sell it to her - they said something about having to inventory it and then it going on the "discards" table but I fear that it probably just wound up in the dumpster.

Also, I found a couple of other things there....a bracelet made of many tiny Pinkie Pies:

wrist Pinkies

These are those "lucky bracelet" things where the different colors supposedly represent something you are trying to "call" into your life (I guess?). This is Red Pinkie, who is for Love. But really, I got it because it was the closest one they had to the true Pinkie color. They also had green ("Balance") and orange ("Bold") and grey ("Sophisticated") and maybe some other color but whatever. And yeah, they're probably made for kid-wrists because they're tiny, but luckily, I have small wrists, so it fits, at least until the elastic perishes.

I also got something I had been wanting to try to find. One of the pairs of khakis I wear for fieldwork has a hole near the knee that I wanted to patch up (so they wouldn't keep fraying). Yes, the truly frugal thing would have been to have done what my mother did to my jeans when I was a kid and cut a scrap of fabric and sew it on, but I decided I wanted one of those embroidered patches like hippies put on their Army-surplus jackets, and I wanted the most 70s-fabulous one I could find.

Success:

groovy + squad goals

I don't even know if it's iron-on or sew-on. (I hope it's sew-on, but I guess I better check first).

Also, the magnet there - it says "Squad Goals" and has the Golden Girls on it - there was a t-shirt of that at Books a Million and I admit I kind of wanted it, but didn't need another t-shirt, so when I saw the magnet, it made me happy I could have the image in smaller, more-reasonably-priced form. I might even take it over to my office and put it on one of the file cabinets to secretly amuse myself.

the yarn is for yet another Pony. A while back I mentioned the idea of a ponified Rapunzel? It seemed like too good an idea given the right color of Red Heart Soft (one of the colors in cartoon Rapunzel's dress, which will become the Pony's pelt - I have yellow for the hair already).

Yes, I have to finish other stuff first, and Surprise is next in the queue, but I like the idea of a Rapunzel pony. (Will have to think about a good cutie mark, though. A comb, maybe?)

And then the single largest (and most expensive, actually, as the yarn was all 20% off, and so the $25 giant skein was actually $20...) was this:

giant stuffed calico cat

I saw that at Books a Million and was like **grabby hands** and then told myself no, I didn't need it. And then I saw they had stuffed We Bare Bears, except their version of them kind of was not as good as I would have hoped, so I decided I didn't need an Ice Bear after all. And then I looked at a bunch of other things - some manga, some t-shirts - but kept coming back to Giant Cat.

I haven't named her yet. Tentative name is Marshmallow but I'm not sure I like that. (Maybe Giant Cat is a better name, even). She is called "Niko Niko" on her tag but I don't care for that either.

Anyway. It was a good day but it went too fast - I had to get back home starting around 3 because I also had to stop at the Kroger. (And Laura had a performance tonight). But maybe we can do it again some time - one thing I want to do is go see the "salt palace" in Grand Saline, which would be a little closer for me and a little farther for her. 

2 comments:

anita said...

Sounds like a lovely time! Especially finding Niko Niko . . . I need to keep an eye out for something like that. I'm glad you had this day.

purlewe said...

This sounds like a fun day! And I love all the things you got (those are REALLY big skeins, they make the sock skeins look like minis!) but I really love Niko Niko. So cute.