Not Available in Stores

Things are happnin' around this town tiny assortment of houses. Population: 29 according to the 2000 census, for you newcomers.

The Habitat for Humanity house owners are moving in! There are too many trees for me to snoop, er, see the site from my kitchen or front porch, but I did observe a moving truck pull up there this morning. It's a young couple who have a baby child. I'm interested because we used to own the lot, but sold it at cost to Habitat. And it is across the street from us.

The school renovation is chugging along. Floors are being replaced and asbestos is being professionally removed. Mr. Rich Guy's minion, Dave, is my nemesis and he is in charge of the workmen. Dave has been incredibly ugly to me in the past and so I try to avoid him. That's why I don't know more about the goings on at the school. Or the General Store which he also manages. And the Lion's Club, of which he is current president.

Dave is now in charge of booth rental at the Celebrate Laconia festival and is doing a terrible job. Trust me on this one.

Okay. Sour grapes involved and I admit it. I used to do the booth rental, as well as advertising and public relations, for the festival. I ordered the porta potties. I wrote the press releases and sent them out. I designed, printed, and distributed flyers. I provided the trash cans and helped dispose of the trash afterwords. I marked out booth spaces. I kept the books and dealt with the State. I created two quilts for auction. I decided which student won the scholarship money and then went to the school event to award it. I made disgruntled people happy, etc. and so forth. The festival was my baby from inception until I handed it over three years ago to the Gang of Several.

I really try to fergit and not fret. (Part of me still wants to Be in Charge. Stupid me.) I am proud that Celebrate Laconia, after 9 years, has outlasted Maulkport's Octoberfest and New Middletown's Buffalo something or other thingie.

There are small signs that the Gang of Several is preparing for the October festival. Raffle tickets for a hand made quilt are being sold. Want some? Dollar a chance, 6 for $5. The Welcome to Laconia signs are being landscaped. Sweetie and I may be in Canada on October 11th. Here's hoping.

Slippery When Wet

We are no longer a one car couple!

This morning, we went to the bank for the cash and even though I no longer keep any savings withdrawl slips on hand, we got our money in about five minutes. Love me some local bank.

After giving the cash to the seller, we drove the car directly to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and even though the man neglected to record the mileage and write down the date on the title, we were able to transfer said title and get tags. In SEVEN MINUTES. I sing the Praises to our local BMV!

Then we drove two blocks to our insurance agent, (who greeted us by name,) and he completed our paperwork, issued new insurance cards, and chatted about this thing and the other. Another whole fifteen minutes. (We got deer coverage and all that, too, just in case.)

These are several of the really good things about living in a small community.

Oh, the new car is a 1990 Mercedes Benz 300. In pretty fine condition, too. Leather interior and electric everything. Sunroof. It's smaller, a bit, than mine, and so should get better gas mileage. It also has two airbags. We both feel better now about him driving home along the Horseshoe Casino Carnage Highway.

p.s. Reckon we'll be putting up the Obama yard sign soon.

Open Weekends

This charming bonnet is from the January 1980 Workbasket Magazine. Click image for much bigger.


After my initial laugh and eeewww moment, I thought about how the idea of a face on the back of a hat could be improved upon. A sculptured, knitted face. A happy face. A scary face. Or, alternately, a symbol such as @ or red circle w/slash. What do you all think?

Do Not Get in Eyes

Livin' on the Edge. That's my Sweetie and me. We applied for our passport cards today at the County Clerk's Office. We were both over-prepared and nervous. I had to hit the rescuer enhaler.

I don't know why we were I was nervous, except that any official paperwork - the kind that has to be just so, last name first and all that - just freaks me out anymore. The clerk I dealt with knew me from when she worked at my bank. She lives within a mile of my house. Sweetie had his own clerk. (She didn't know him but was nice anyway.) Upshot? Nothing scary happened, and so if we do get to Canada in October, with these cards, the US will let us back in. Imagine!

Limited Liability

The back, she be healed!

Yippee and Wahoo! (Cue James Brown - I Feeel Goooood! Na na na na na na nah)

The two slips and falls that I took still seem like the instigators of my injury, yet in hindsight, the "new" knitting chair is also suspect. The "old" and beloved knitting chair, the new one's fraternal twin, had bunny pee on it (imagine that) and the new slipcover didn't fit and so, it was sent to live in the back room. However, I quickly discovered that the "new" chair did not fit my body well and my coccyx soon began the slow ache. Being the cheap bitch person that I am, I was sloooooow to acknowledge that free may not always be good.



These two chairs have a story that I shall now bore you with. About four years ago, when I still had the store, I took an(other) unfortunate fall in the bunny barn one evening. I went forehead first into the corner of a 10"x10" post. Hard. I stood up and immediately understood that 1) this was gonna hurt and b) this was gonna leave a mark. Exit barn, stage left.

Halfway to the house, the blood began leaking through my fingers. What to do? What to do? Go to the hospital? Nah. Maybe. Okay, and how? I could drive, I thought. But I don't want to get blood all over the upholstery. What to do? Ask a neighbor? Betty? Who is 78 years old? In the end, I walked the few feet to the general store and asked the cashier what I should do. "Let me see it," said Peg, "911 it is."

Maybe I could drive? "Nuh uh. You're gonna need stitches. I'm calling 911."

Long story short. After dealing with our local, lively and mostly inept first responders (I mean, how hard is it to take a person's blood pressure?), I got to ride in the bambulance to the emergency room. Peg was nice enough to also call my friend, Nurse Kelly, who met me there. Dr. Precious (a whole 'nuther story) gave me 9 metal staples and a 30 day supply of antirobotics. (30 days!!!???) (For a copiously bleeding head wound?)

Honestly, I thought that the whole thing was much ado about nothing because I felt pretty good. (Showing Sweetie the staples that night; yet another story.)

Of course I went to the store the next day and the rest of the week. (If not me, then who?) The first day, I mostly sat with my head on a table. Later, I took to sleeping on the floor in the back. Then Kelly arrived with two rose colored, velvet upholstered chairs. They rocked and swiveled too! She said that when she saw me that first day, sitting on a metal folding chair with my head on a table - and miserable - she knew that she had to get me some more comfortable chairs. She found them through a classified in the local paper placed by an elderly couple. The Chairs were in excellent condition and so joined The Couch to form the knitting area in my store.

That's where these chairs come from. They are both special to me in several ways. However, one of them needs to be set along the street with a great big FREE sign on it.

I am now using what I will call the Vaguely Mediterranean occasional chair. Having a high back and firm seat are its good qualities. It was also a gift chair. No rocking, no swiveling, but my back feels great! And I can knit in comfort again!

Here is the current afghan for sweetie, and Gospel Organ, in said chair. Remember the Happy Organ guy?

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I still subscribe to Interweave Knits. Used to get FiberArts, Knitter's, SpinOff, American Craft.

I got so little from the magazines. Lame writing, ugly patterns, (Knitters,) too much glass and not-very-interesting-most-of-the-time contents. (American Craft) I'm sure it's just me, but the so-called art world pisses. Me. Off. (The same stupid question - Is it art or is it craft. Fuck You.) FiberArts had some really good stuff, but not enough. And SpinOff seemed to be a repeat of stuff from past issues. This mild rant could continue for many paragraphs. I guess what I am trying to say is that I don't feel a need for what these magazines have to offer. Your mileage will vary, I am sure.

Anyway, my sub to IK is good for at least another year and so every three months, it arrives. I thumb through it, read the articles, look at the ads - in about an hour. Then it joins The Pile.

I won't recycle them yet, because my mood and needs may change and I will need That Pattern someday. But it is more like at some future date, I will look to these magazines for inspiration, not the particular.

My internal thermostat is running hot so I don't need another sweater for the winter except maybe a light cardigan. Neither does Sweetie, ever since he discovered sub-artic polypropylene undies. I have plenty of sock, shawl, lace patterns to last my lifetime. I'm not a beginning knitter or spinner. Even crocheter.

So. The latest IK arrives and Sweetie and I flip through it together. He could tell that some of the patterns were ugly and/ or stupid without my help. I had hoped that Eunnie would have had a greater influence on content by now. Granted, it must be hard to appeal to a diverse audience; to keep the newbies and the old hands happy. But still, good design should reign.

Two things struck me as most lovely. One was a Norah Gaughan sweater (Strawberry Hill) in an advertisement for Rowan yarns on page 4. (The pattern on page five for a Loop-d-Loop for a sweatercoat is so awful that I cannot imagine what the designer was thinking.)

The other thing that caught my eye was a pair of mitts shown on page 70. The pattern itself, Winter Twilight Mitts, is clever and I downloaded it free from their website. I thought the tree imagery would work very well for socks.

So, this is my thing. One this subscription is up, I won't renew.

For Professional Use Only

There is a pernicious tale still circulating that one needs to kill a rabbit in order to use its wool. I stridently say, Nay Nay!

Now, if one requires a rabbit PELT, then yes, the said rabbit needs to be of the deceased variety. Likewise with the so-called Lucky Rabbit's Foot, which is lucky only if killed at the full moon. (Not so lucky for the rabbit, though.)

Angora Bunny Wool, on the other hand, is harvested from a live and frisky lapine. With good husbandry (in my case, wifely?) skills and luck, an angora can live many years, thus yielding several pounds of lovely wool per creature over its natural lifetime.

Angora rabbits are apparently a genetic variation on a wild rabbit, and the histories say that they were found and subsequently domesticated in Ankara, Turkey. (Hence the name.) Without the aid of humans to frequently shear their long wool, they could not survive in the "wild."

So, they exist because of human keepers, with their long, soft, warm, and luxurious angora wool. We angora ranchers harvest that wool. Very much like how shepherds shear the sheep wool once or twice a year. (Yes, they generally eat the extra lambs and the older sheep - mutton.) In that way, those sheep are different from my babies. (I could not eat Baby Bunny Stew. Unless I were starving. It's all relative, I guess.) (See below.)

My bunnies are kept in clean quarters with fresh hay and water, rabbit pellets and occasional treats. I tend their diseases, if they have them, in the best way I can. I even snip off the rare tumor if I have to. When I scissor off their wool every three months, I clip their toenails and give them a general once-over to check for problems. Mostly, I believe my rabbits are healthy and as happy as a rabbit can be.

They depend upon me for their survival. I am not a farmer. I am an all-too-caring human and so I do not cull as a general rule. Take for example Groovy of the Wry Neck. I should have culled him, aka killed him, more than 6 months ago. I couldn't then and I can't now. Not as long as he is eating and pooping and not suffering.

I am responsible for their care and well-being. I have put a bullet in my babies' head, when I knew they were dying and they were suffering. I hated it, oh how I hated it, but I felt it to be my duty to them. I hate to see them suffering, knowing what the end would be in any case.

At times, when a bunny dies and has a good coat, I will skin and process the pelt myself rather than letting it go to the coyotes and buzzards.

It has been a process, finding this balance. I am fortunate in that, during my lifetime so far, I do not have to hunt, shoot, trap, and kill fur bearing creatures to keep me warm and keep me alive.

In another lifetime, I imagine I would have had no qualms about making the choice between them or me. Eat or be eaten.

So it goes.