Friends with benefits

Part of developing a marketing campaign should be to check online and see if your clever phrase already has an established meaning. Particularly if the current meaning is sexual. Especially if you are a family-oriented organization.

We just got a brochure asking us to support the art museum. They offer Passion, Excitement, and Intrigue - by becoming a friend with benefits. They repeated the Friends with Benefits line many more times throughout the flier, so it's obviously their new catch phrase. I'd like to think it's an innocent mistake, but when it's linked to passion and excitement, I can't imagine there's not some level of intentional double entendre.

Of course, taken literally, I think I'd be pretty disappointed to go there and find out all I get is free admission to see the art.

Unexpected Thanksgiving

We were meant to be in Phoenix right now, celebrating my aunt's 70th birthday on T'giving day with all our family. The airlines had other ideas, and as we watched our flight get delayed yet again and learned we would miss our connecting flight and there were no others available at all, I was really bummed about the holiday. I really wanted to be with them all, to go around the table sharing what we're thankful for, and have the chance to catch up with everyone. Instead I was on the phone with the airline confirming our tickets would be refunded and trying to decide what to do about dinner on Thursday. But it's turned out to be a really delightful holiday.

It was only 9:30am when we left the airport (although being up for 6 hours already made it feel much later). D needed a new coat, so we headed over to the stores and enjoyed having fully stocked racks and shelves everywhere we turned. We decided that rather than try to create a traditional turkey dinner at home, I'd grill steaks with mushrooms and onions, grilled asparagus, and mashed potatoes. We stopped at Fresh Market and they had chanterelle mushrooms - so far my favorite fungus and not one you see fresh in stores this time of year. I picked some up and sauteed them with cippolini onions from our garden, a nice holiday-level treat.

I had thought about running a Turkey Trot 5k out in Phoenix, I figured it'd be warm enough I could do it barefoot. I decided the night before T'giving to head to town and run in our local one. Although it was cold enough I did wear shoes:

It was a fun event, and the race organizers said over 14,000 people and 700 dogs had registered! The shirts had big turkeys on them, and the dogs got matching bandannas with bones on them. I have no idea what my time was. With that many people the start was really sluggish and for some reason I'm not listed in the chip timing results :(. Not that it really matters. I ran at an even pace the whole time and had fun doing it.

The weather warmed up in the afternoon and we went outside for a game of catch. We were a bit rusty, including our outfielder Kayla, who kept losing the ball in the leaves. Kayla was a riot. She kept running back and forth between us each throw, rather than stand still and wait to see where the ball was headed. When one of us missed a catch she'd crank into high gear and chase after the ball no matter how tired she was.

So overall, despite the change in plans, it turned into a very nice holiday with a lot of the features I had hoped for. And since it seems incorrect to end a T'giving post without a mention of thankfulness - my heart overflows with gratitude at the life I have and the people I get to share it with. I love you all!

From cool to disturbing

Recent trips have laid me over in Detroit - wait that sounds really wrong. Ahem, recent trips have been routed through Detroit as my connecting airport rather than Atlanta. Now before you uggh in sympathetic dismay, let me say that the Detroit airport is relatively new, clean, and fairly easy to navigate. And closer to the Northeast as a layover than Atlanta. Plus they have a super cool walkway between the main terminals. It has continually changing muted lights and synth music playing. Which is nice, because without that it would be a painfully long hallway to traverse underground. Also an interesting bit about Detroit is the Delta SkyClub lounge has an open bar. And by open I mean you walk up to the shelves of liquor and pour your own drink, or pull a beer from the tap.

 

However, not everything is cool in the airports. I noticed this incredibly disturbing sign in Atlanta in very highly trafficked area.

"Did you SEE something suspicious commuting 

to work or grabbing a bite to eat?

Then SAY something to local authorities

to make it right.

Report suspicious activity. Call 9-1-1"

Now, I'm not one to jump on the Nazi bandwagon, but really in this case I think you can't help see the similarity. How many Hitler Youth turned in neighbors and community members to the authorities for "something suspicious"? Let's all spy on our neighbors! Turn them in and "make it right"! Classic 1984. Also, did you notice the phone number to use? My first thought was oh, they have a 9/11 phone number for this. Then I realized it's the freakin emergency number they're telling you to call!! Like 911 Emergency Response has the time to handle every overzealous person who calls in because they think someone is behaving suspiciously while they're grabbing a bite to eat. I'm also disturbed that the motto is trademarked.

And to go from the seriously disturbing and trademarked to the mildly disturbing and slightly trademark infringing:

What in the hell is this? No, it's not Splenda. It's not even a generic form of Splenda's ingredients. I know the color yellow can't be trademarked, but I was about to put this in my tea when I saw the name and then the ingredient list. Which would have sucked, as this is essentially the pink packet sweetener with some extra chemicals added. If I use artificial sweetener at all, I want real yellow packets. Or blue if I have to. Never pink. And don't be putting pink stuff in a yellow packet and pulling the wool over our eyes.

You said drive UP to town, why am I going south?

We have an odd custom for referring to travel direction here in the southern Appalachian area I live. I'm about 30 min. north of a nearby town, and 1000 feet lower in elevation since I'm in the river valley and it's further up the ridge. If I was going to the town, I would say I'm going UP there. And likewise, if a friend in town complains it's snowing, I can reply that we just have rain down here. 


I think it's mostly a holdover from horse/wagon days, when having to climb a nearby mountain was a better indicator of where the next town was than just a compass point. And believe me, every mountain and hill here has a name, and often when people complain of the weather or traffic it's by mountain name rather than towns - seems they're still the default landmarks despite our ease traversing them. Also, it's usually quite a bit colder on the ridges compared to the valleys, and it just feels right to refer to a colder place as ‘up from here’.


Coming from the North originally I found this seeming inversion of direction ridiculous and refused to join in. I'm north of town dammit! Everyone knows north/south! Why say you'll drive up to a town, when you're actually heading south? I argued the point at first, but after I accepted the shift, it seems to fit so much better than something like a compass point. And now I refer to locations by up/down elevations rather than map directions by default. And so does everyone else. Until you have a visitor from the north, and you  accidentally add an hour onto their expected drive time because they thought when I said we'd drive up to town, they thought that town was north of here.

Must share - shopping other ppl's stashes

I just stumbled upon a fantastic feature in Ravelry that is going to save me tons of money. People list yarn from their stashes to sell, and you can search directly within that group for stuff that's a great deal! I needed 2 skeins of a certain brand and color, and found someone selling exactly what I needed for about 40% less than list price. Now I also know what to do with some of my impulse purchases I'll never use.

From the homepage I clicked the search icon (magnifying glass). Then chose to search stashes. There's a click box on the left to select For Sale or Trade. Then you can search for specific names, colors, fibers, yarn weights, etc. Woo hoo!

Gotta run, there's stash mining to be done!

Epiphany

Almost from the beginning, I've always been a sock knitter. I learned to knit on a scarf , then made a pair of ribbed mittens, then I was on to socks. I was such a new knitter I knotted the yarn together on the sole of my first pair! Socks have been my thing for well over a decade. It's always socks.

Then something happened this past year. I just got tired of socks. I couldn't bear the thought of knitting another one. I stopped looking at sock patterns, passed by sock yarn in the store. I unraveled the one I was working on - that's how little I cared about finishing it. Admittedly I've gotten a lot of knitting done since then, but still it's made me pause wondering what happened to my love of socks?

A recent KnitPicks podcast included asking someone how they got started knitting. I turned off the radio and started answering it as if they had asked me. Which turned into a delightfully time-filling interview driving down the interstate. And it uncovered why I abandoned socks - they abandoned me first.

Rundown of my socktastrophe: Last year I knit a pair for my Emah that were mirror images. Only I kept messing up and essentially knit almost 5 full socks to get two that matched. I excitedly started a complex fairisle pair, only I could never get it right - the fabric was always too unstretchy to slip over my heel. The next pair I knit for Emah was a pattern I'd recently used before, but somehow I picked up the wrong needles for the second sock and ended up knitting 3 full socks to get a matched set. Then there was the fiddly modular pair that if I put down for more than a few days I'd have to re-teach myself how to do the pattern - unraveled! Then the final pair - lovely cashmere and wool yarn from an indie dyer, bought on my trip to Vancouver. Easy to knit pattern, but somehow I just couldn't get through it.

At the time I didn't think of all the work that was for naught, but looking back it was a bad year for sock knitting. I think my total lack of interest now, and amazing ability to finish things lately, really stems from a deep discouragement that socks are a finishable project. But that gives me hope, as I think one day I'll dismiss my discouragement and be back to my socks again. Which is good, I have way too much sock yarn to really give it up.

Highly productive (and no that doesn't mean I have bronchitis)

It means I've been knitting (and finishing things) like a maniac! Normally I'm terrible about finishing projects. I get to the 3/4 mark and completely lose interest in the project. I develop an overwhelming desire to knit something else and it's a chore to trudge through the last bit. But I never care since I'm a process knitter not a product knitter. But lately when I get to the 3/4 mark I can wait to get the item finished to see what it's like. Which has resulted in a huge number of finished items lately.

 

The teal sweater was started at the end of March. I have a photo from that insane Maine-DC-Dallas trip the first weekend of April that has the first few inches of the sweater sitting on my lap in the plane. This was my very first successful sweater - which means I've accomplished something that was on my lifetime goals list! The button I used I've had for about 6 years. It's the butt end of an antler, all squiggly and unmistakably natural.

The pink Candy Floss Cowl just came out of nowhere. I can't explain why I bought the yarn, or why I knit this piece. But I like it now, and it came together pretty quickly. It's got a lot of versatility, so may end up being a good item to wear this winter.

The purple sweater is an Anthropologie knock-off. It only took 250 yards to knit! The entire time I was knitting I kept saying No effin' way can you make a sweater with only 250 yards of yarn. And when it was done and I realized not only can you make a sweater with that little yarn, and an ANTHROPOLOGIE sweater at that, but that it's super cute and a great end to a weekend of knitting...uh, I'm not sure how to end this sentence, I think it surpassed run-on into some irretrievably bad-grammar point. But you know what I mean.

This sweater needs a clasp to close, which means I finally get the chance to use my vintage brooch collection!

The final piece is a scarf I knit as a thank you for someone. She really helped me make one of the more difficult decisions I've had to deal with this past year or so, and what better way to say thank you than with knitted goods? I've had this pattern favorited on Ravelry for ages so was glad for the excuse to knit it up.

There are actually a couple other things I've finished but I'm less spectacularly thrilled with them, so I'm leaving 'em off this blog roll. But if you're dying to see them check out Rattlefox on Ravelry.