Rain, Rain, Go Away!

Well, folks, what should be a fun-filled weekend in the warm Indian summer of Michigan is currently on what seems like it's third straight day of rain. Seriously, the rain started on Friday afternoon, and hasn't let up much except for brief moments. I guess if the basement is ever going to flood on us, nows the time.....

This week has been a very busy one for me. Was able to collect a full suite of data on the Portage Creek near Pinckney, which was a very good thing to get off of my plate. Hosted a Guild knit-in on Tuesday at my home and had a pretty good crowd there to hang out. Thanks to Teresa and Irene for helping me get my first ever crocheted rug started. This rug is being worked out of the roving shown in the photo. Originally, I started out with the center being consisting of some of the gray. However, by the time I finished up one ball of gray and one ball of the brown, I realized just how far each ball was going (which is not very far at all), and wondered how the orange ball will fit in b/c I wouldn't want it going only half-way around (and it will be in this rug!). Given that the rug was started on Tuesday evening and it was only Wednesday night, I reached the conclusion to tear the whole thing out and start over with the orange in the center. Good thing it was a "Ghost Hunters" and "Destination Truth" night, so just ripped away and restarted while watching those shows.
Since this rug is worked on a Size S crochet hook, the whole project went very, very quickly. Plus, since I've never worked with roving before, I wasn't able to draft it out very thinly without breaking it, so the 5 balls of roving didn't last very long. Needless to say, by Friday night, I had a nice and soft rug to put next to bed since my house is all hardwood flooring. Last night, Sylvain discovered just how soft the rug was while laying on it, waiting for SNL to come on....

Wednesday was spent at a 6:30 am dermo appointment (me to take care of poison ivy I've had since mid-July; Sylvain to wrap up his scalp psoriasis). Whenever we have these early morning appointments, we usually have breakfast somewhere before I drop him off at school. Per usual, I let him pick and he chose Denny's. That will be the last time I let him do that. The service was poor and the food mediocre, but hey, that's really my fault isn't it b/c that's pretty standard for that place. Next time, I'm going to insist we go to one of the mom-and-pop places that Sarah's told me about in Haslett...So, after seeing him off to school, I had a pretty unadventurous day at work, then helped out at the Okemos Jr. Chief Football Punt, Pass, and Kick event. That was fun, but my shoes ended up giving both my feet really bad cramps that I've never experienced before. Was it the uneven ground that we were on? Being on my feet all day? The weather? Who knows, but if I feel like that again, I'm going to donate those shoes and be done with them.


Nothing much happened on Thursday and Friday. I finished up the meandering stripes scarf for the U of M vs MSU hat/scarf drive and contemplated what the next donor project will be. I watched another disk of "Hex" and am glad that the story is moving fairly quickly on that show.

So Saturday, I met up with Erin and we braved the rain to participate in Knitterpalooza, which was being held in the Detroit area this year. Of the many shops that were participating in the yarn crawl, we only made it to two: The Knitting Den (in South Lyon) and Heritaage Spinning and Weaving (in Lake Orion). Yeah, it was a haul between the two, but we figured that the rest that were closer to the actual Knitterpalooza meet-up would be much busier and that it would be best to throw our business towards those farther out. You gotta support these LYSs any way you can, right? Since this is fresh off the heels of the Lansing Shop Hop, I really didn't need to purchase more yarn or patterns or anything, but did find a few good discounts: a $3.99 ball of Encore for a donor hat using the Foliage pattern; a ball of Katia Arc En Ciel, which was also for $3.99 and was going to be used for the Calorimetry headband (for myself); and a ball of the Classic Worsted Tapestry (cheap acrylic/wool blend) for the Linked Rib scarf from the "Knitting New Scarves" book that the Meandering Sripes scarf came out of. All of my purchases were from the Knitting Den, which also had a grab bag for the Knitterpaloozers. Erin won a very nice notions bag and I won a pattern counter, which was immediately put to use to keep count for my feather and fan shawl. At Heritage, their Knitterpalooza sale was 50% off of all Cascade yarn, which is what I had made the Great American Aran Afghan out of. Given that when I purchased the yarn for that project, it was $9.20 per ball and required 17 balls, walking into a store where I could make a second afghan at half the cost was quite tempting....that is until I saw the colors that were left. There was a mish-mash of colors available, and the only color that was there that had about 17 balls was a bird-poop yellow. Thanks, but no thanks.

Before catching up with the rest of the 'paloozerers at the Jaycees Park in Royal Oak, we had lunch at Kruse and Muer in Lake Orion. Erin had been to other locations before and had really good things to say about the food, particularly the dinner bread. The food was good, but my only complaint is that there seemed to be a miscommunication between me, the waitress, and possibly the kitchen. See, I was torn between two of their dishes: a crab cake dinner (which was supposed to come with rice pilaf and veges) or totelinni. The decision hinged on what the vege of the day was. When asked, the waitress told us that it was beans, but would check b/c sometimes it was a vegetable medley (squash, carrots, the standard stuff). Okay, so if it's beans, I was going with the tortellini b/c I wasn't in a bean mood at all. She returned to our table and told us that it was the medley. So, okay, my decision was made. Crab cake it was. Well, when our plates arrived, guess what I had? Beans! I immediately asked about that, and was told that it was the medley. Okay, so underneath all of the beans, there was exactly one sorry-ass piece of carrot, one sorry-ass piece of summer squash, and one sorry-ass piece of zucchini. It's a good thing that Erin and I are friends and I didn't want to embarrass her, but I was real tempted for the bitch switch in me to head to on and have a little tizzy. The crab cakes were fine. The rice pilaf had some sort of salsa on it (why?). And the beans, we'll just not talk further about.....I'd definitely go back to that restaurant, but will be sure to try the tortellini the next time.

So, after that little dining adventure, we headed back down I-75 for the meet-up. My crazy person for the day was a hitch-hiker who thought it was wise to hike down the middle of the right-most lane in the driving rain (thankfully Erin was behind the wheel b/c I would likely have earned a new hood ornament). The meet-up had quite a few people there huddled under the pavillion (around 20 or so other knitters). We didn't bring camp chairs, though must remember for next year, but the picknick tables worked out just fine, though a little damp. I casted on for the Calorimetry headband, but found the Katia yarn to not have enough stretch to it, so swapped that out in favor of the Classic Worsted, which is coming along much better. The pattern openly warned to "....not use a yarn which will lose its shape, becoming drapey and flaccid with wear." I put the project down for the group photo, which a few knitters were passing by while on the way to their seats and, as they were passing by, joked that the photo of the headband on the pattern (I printed in black-white) looked like labia. Who said that knitters were boring people?!? We may think like 13-year-olds sometimes, but we're definitely a fun bunch of folks....

There were some really nice door prizes. Erin and I each won a set of Stick Candy stitch markers by Strangefruit (two of which are being used for the headband). My set has butterfly bead on it, and I hope that I don't rough 'em up too badly in my knitting bag and lose the beads.

We didn't hang out too long with the group as the rain did not let up at all and I wouldn't want Erin to drive home to Charlotte in the rain and dark. So, we returned to Lansing around 8 and had a fairly uneventful drive home.

Today, I updated a ton of photos on my Ravelry project profile and am going to soon get ready to spend the rest of the day at the football field selling concessions. We'll definitely have a good run on coffee and hot chocolate, but I don't expect that there'll be many people hanging out in such gloomy and poor weather.