I'll Show Them to You and You'll See Them Shine

Big happenings in Susan's world!

Well, kind of. The knitting part of it anyway.

First things first:

I finished Boyfriend's Dashings.

*Feel free to insert your applause here*

(I made him hold my book while I took the picture to give him something to do with his hands. I have to read it for a scholarship. And to answer your inevitable questions, yes it's big, yes the print's small, no it's not super interesting, yes I'm going to read it anyway. I read Gone with the Wind just for fun, and I think that might have been longer. If I read that for free, I think I can suck it up and read this for a chance at $10,000 for Dream School.)

They came out pretty good except for the part where I had some serious issues with the yarn (Bernat Cashmere Blends), reiterating my belief that I should spend more money at my LYS, less at Michael's.

Speaking of LYS's....

SUSAN'S FABULOUS LYS ADVENTURE (or local yarn store adventure, for my non-knitting audience, mainly BFF and Rossola).

Boyfriend offered to take me up to my LYS once I was done with his gloves so that I could buy yarn for my Holly sweater. Which is exciting in its own right, to have a boyfriend who volunteers to do that. And, also, it's exciting due to the fact that I get to spend some time in a converted barn filled with all sorts of yarn that I can't afford.

Here is the conversation with the yarn lady that ensued.

Yarn Lady (YL): Hello! How are you today?

Susan (S): I'm good, how are you?

YL: Good. Are you looking for anything in particular?

S: Well, I was hoping to find a cheaper alternative to cashmerino.

(Because YL carries cashmerino, which is what the pattern calls for, however it calls for $85 worth of it. Um... thanks anyway.)

YL: Well, let's look at some of the other aran weight yarns I have.

S: Super!

YL: I have this one over here. This is a really nice yarn, and it's $7 for twice as much yarn as the $8.50 ball of cashmerino.

S: Okay, but how much of that will I need?

(Because $7 sounds nice when you only need one, but...)

YL: You'll need 6 skeins.

(I turned to Boyfriend (B) and made a face as though YL had just kicked me in the stomach.)

S: That's $42!

YL: Yarn's expensive. This is a really nice yarn.

(Granted, I know that I haven't chosen an inexpensive hobby. But damned if I'm going to spend more on yarn to make my first sweater, that I'm more likely than not going to mess up somehow, than I do on a sweater, already made, from a store.)

S: But I only work two days a week blowing up balloons!

B: I'll pay for half of it.
S: No.

B: But I will.

S: No thank you. I don't want you to.

(I already spend enough on my yarn habit without dragging Boyfriend down with me.)

YL: You know what else I have...

Then she pointed up to the very top shelf, where there were about forty skeins of yarn (Plymouth Yarns Encore, 75% acrylic, 25% wool) in all sorts of colors, that sort of looked like they had been thrown up there and forgotten about. And since they were $5 a skein and I only needed 5 of them, they were well within my Party Store Candy Department Specialist's budget.

I realize now that it is unrealistic to go to the yarn store expecting to spend between $20 and $30 for good yarn. I would never ever spend more than $50, but I may have to up my budget for next time. It's just that, for my first sweater, it doesn't make sense to me to spend that much money. I can live with ruining a $24.95 sweater. $42? Not so much.

And, finally, this was the on-the-way-home conversation:

B: Maybe you should just buy a llama and make your own yarn.

S: Yeah, a lot of people do that. I don't think Shelly would like that very much, though.

B: So when you have your own house, then.

S: I'm not sure it's any more cost-efficient to buy, house, feed, and care for a llama then it is to buy yarn.

B: Yeah, but then you get to have a pet llama.

S: Llamas spit. Maybe I'd just get sheep.

B: That's an idea.

S: But I'd have to get a couple, because they live in flocks.

B: Then you'd need a---

S: Farm?

B: No, I was going to say one of those canes with the hooks on them that Moses had.

Song of the Day:
"Whatever colors you have in your mind, I'll show them to you and you'll see them shine." - Bob Dylan, "Lay, Lady, Lay"

Standing in the Sunlight Laughing

Once upon a time there was a girl named Susan, who just wanted to knit her boyfriend a pair of Dashings. So she set out on her Dashing journey by purchasing yarn from her local craft store because she had a coupon. The yarn was from Bernat, and it was pretty, and was made of acrylic, nylon, and cashmere, making very soft, but also hella rugged.

The first mitt went off without a gitch. All was well. There were no visible mistakes. There may not have even been any invisible mistakes. It was hard to tell, as, if they existed, they were invisible. Hence invisible mistakes.

Then came the second mitt. Again, all was well. That is, until she ran out of yarn from the first skein, and was forced to join a new one.

"Okay," thought Susan. "I do this all the time."

It attached superly (sometimes I invent words. Don't judge.). Then she realized that this skein was so much softer than the last. And as she got farther and farther along, she realized that it was visibly different, with more pronounced stitches, and resulted in a much softer, floppier fabric than the first skein did.

To which all I can say is, WHAT THE HELL?????

Growl.

Anyway, I'm almost done with Dashing, so I can buy yarn for Holly. I'm going to my LYS for this though. I trust her more the craft store.

Song of the Day:
"Whatever happened to Tuesday and so slow. Going down the old mine with a transistor radio. Standing in the sunlight laughing, hiding behind a rainbow's wall. Slipping and sliding all along the water fall, with you, my brown eyed girl." -Van Morrison, "Brown Eyed Girl"

Go Ahead and Ask Her

I like working on Sundays. Time and a half is totally worth blowing up the intense amount of balloon orders for Sunday birthday parties and baby showers.

I did not, however, get to blow up balloons today. Today I ran the register and individually price ticketed Beanie Babies.

You wish you could have my job!

I actually like the register a lot. It's a thinking job, unlike mindlessly stocking streamers, which only requires figuring out if the streamers are baby pink, pink, light pink, or bombay pink. I kid you not, give or take a hue.

But this month, we're asking customers to make a $1 donation to the local children's hospital. Nice in theory, especially when people actually donate, but it becomes wildly frustrating when they don't.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to come off as all high and mighty, and be like, "If you don't donate to the sick kids, you should hate yourself. Because I certainly hate you, you stupid-face!"

Because I know that every store you go in asks you to donate, and nobody can possibly donate to everything.

I don't care if you don't donate.

Well, to be truthful, if people do donate, I pack their bags much more neatly than I would if they didn't. But that's besides the point.

But if you don't want to donate, for the love of Marshmallow, just say no!

It's easy to say no. I say it all the time.

These are the answers I get instead:

"Um, not today thank you."

How about tomorrow then?

"Let's wait and see what the total comes to."

"It's $116.36."

"Oh. I guess not then."

Really? Because you just spent over a hundred dollars for your healthy kid's birthday party. What's a dollar to you at this point?

"I don't have any singles on me."

"The donation just gets added to your total."

"Um... no I don't have any singles."

I know you're not an idiot. You just told me that your "I'm 21 today! Buy me a drink!" button was supposed to be 30% off, which should make it $2.19. You figured that out in your head in about 5 seconds. Stop pretending that you don't know what I'm saying.

"The children's hospital already gets enough money as it is."

I hate you, you ignorant fool.

Please just say no if you don't want to donate. I don't care. Just don't waste my time when there are a serious amount of streamers that need stocking.

Okay, I'm good now. I can move on to knitting.

One Dashing is done, minus weaving in the ends. The pattern's actually really easy, and the thumb was so much easier to make than I thought it would be. I'm think about making Fetching with the yarn left over from Summertime Tunic.

Yes, that is a hole as a matter of fact. No I don't know how it got there. Thank you for noticing though.

I finished it last night when Boyfriend and I went to Boyfriend's BFF's house, which consisted of five guys playing some gory war video game, and me making a fingerless mitt. This is how the conversation went:

"You guys! I just made a thumb!"

*Silence, except the clicking of controller buttons.*

"I did! I was afraid I was going to mess it up, but I didn't, and now it's a thumb!"

*War noises and the repeated use of the f-bomb.*

"It's really hot in here."

*Every boy in room immediately says, "Sorry Susan, it's because I'm here!"*

"That's not what I meant, but thank you for your attentiveness."

*Polite laughter from Boyfriend, who is trying to pretend that he's paying attention to me amidst his video game. I am not fooled. I know where I stand compared to an XBox.*

Then that round of game play ended.

"That's a glove!" exclaimed Boyfriend.

"Uh, yeah I know, it's been a glove for, like, 20 minutes."

"I'm going to try it on."

"Be my guest."

"It fits!"

"I know, I made it that way."

I should mention that Boyfriend is otherwise very attentive.

Song of the Day:

"So go ahead and ask her for happy ever after. Cause nobody knows what’s coming, so why not take a chance on loving." -Chris Rice, "Lemonade"

Is There Anybody Going to Listen to My Story?

So.... the aforementioned secret project?

Dashing, for Boyfriend.

And no I'm not finished. And no, it's not that I can't keep a secret.

Well, actually, that's partly it. I hate keeping secrets like that. Other people's secrets, I'm like a brick wall. I have references that will tell you just that. But fun secrets, like, "Hey, Boyfriend, remember those fingerless mittens I told you that I was going to make for you a few months back? Well, I'm finally making them now that the cold weather is coming to a close. Well, sort of. In a month or two."? That is not easy to keep. Especially considering that I do a lot of my knitting at Boyfriend's house.

So, you see, it's not that I'm a weak secret-keeper so much as it is I really wanted to work on them while Boyfriend and I watched Across the Universe.

Which, by the way, wasn't all that I thought it was going to be. It was a little too trippy for my taste. Though, I did like the roof scene, and especially the scene when Lucy turns around and bursts into "Blackbird."

And also, I totally called it that they were going to open the movie with "Girl." And I'm glad that "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was only the ending credits song, but I'm a little sad that they didn't use "Sexy Sadie." Unless I just missed that. Whatever.

Also, Summertime Tunic is officially done.

I have mixed feelings. It's pretty, but the ribbon isn't really working out as straps, and I don't know how practical it is. The top of it is pretty low-cut, so I have to wear a tank top underneath it, seeing as I am a nice girl, and don't want that to be mistaken.

And in other unrelated news, I just did a bad thing. I ate a cookie.

*Gasp*

I know!

No, but Boyfriend and I gave up all junk food for Lent. And I really haven't had a hard time doing it. It's just that Shelly just made chocolate cookies. From scratch. And they're warm. Warm.

So I ate one.

But it was so warm!

Song of the Day:

"Is there anybody going to listen to my story, all about the girl who came to stay? She's the kind of girl you want so much it makes you sorry. Still you don't regret a single day." -The Beatles, "Girl"