boat stitches

I asked my mom for a pattern for this scarf. I knit it with Lion Brand Homespun, but that was before...

Before I knew about the joys of yarn snobbery. Okay, to be fair. I did have a clue that there was a huge spectrum of yarn and that there was the good, the bad, and the ohmygodnoyoudidn't. I had used up all my awesome yarn and figured that Walmart was a place where a person could buy yarn. Technically, I suppose that is true. When you are working with my budget (which is to say, all I have to my name is debt at the moment) you make crazy impetuous decisions when you think you've got a deal on your hands.

That said, this scarf did come out unbelievably soft and pretty. From what I read about said yarn it may not stay that way, so I'll just have to be wise about who gets it as a gift. It is so pretty though.

Moronblogging: Flower to the People

You would think that a person who'd go into the business of selling flowers would be unflappably amiable, cheerful to a fault, possessed with rosey ideas and filler with love for humankind.

Not so I tell you. There's a certain shop in Alexandria that's as cheerful, sunny and quaint as a shop could be. With one tiny catch. It's run by the devil.

Soon after this little shop opened in the building where I work, I had my first run in with the Flower Bitch. Suddenly, each morning when I arrived at work (none to thrilled to be doing anything but sleeping) I found a car in my assigned, owned by our unit, parking space. Sleep deprivation and space poaching do not mix. I told the building manager. He told her. She'd eventually move. This continued for some time. Some days her flower shop jeep or van would park in my space. (It was clear she'd begun a policy of scooping up office workers' spaces and garaging her shop vehicles there overnight.) Well, one day I told the building manager and for some reason (I dunno, he was dying it turned out.) he told me to go talk with her. I did and she literally (and I would never use literally figuratively) ran me out of her shop screaming at me. She did move the van. Two days later I noticed a keying scratch straight down the driver's side of my car - tail light to tail light.

I passed her one other time in the garage and she acted like a fourth grade boy. Well, since the property manager died, she seems to think all spaces exist for her and she's taken to parking all the shop vehicles in any space she pleases. For more than a week that's included the handicapped spaces.

Moronblogging: Shoppers Food Warehouse

Okay, now I have to confess. I do not usually set foot in Shoppers Food Warehouse. I think this was my fourth time in a Shoppers Food Warehouse. I always think it's not as bad as I remember and then I go there and am astonished at how much I can't stand that place.

I was wandering around inside killing some time before an appointment and taking pictures with my Treo for my food blog. I did find the most magical thing at SFW:

Yum!!!!! Double Chocolate Cookie Crisp??!?! Earlier I wrote about the asininity of the cereal aisle tripping all over itself to reformulate everything with "whole grain".

Aaaaaaaaaaaaanyway, Double Chocolate Cookie Crisp raised my interest so I broke down and decided to purchase an actual food product from Shoppers Food Warehouse. God help me.

Well, we know how I feel about lines, and about morons. There's a VERY special class of morons though called CHECK WRITERS. If you are writing a check at this point when you go into stores you are either a)108 years old b)a credit deadbeat.

Well, first of all I am going with definite credit deadbeat for this dude. He certainly looks like a dude. He's like 38, he's in Shoppers Food Warehouse in the middle of the day. He wrote a check FOR SIX DOLLARS AND TWENTY-NINE CENTS WORTH OF CRAP.


I am guessing he clearly "made me" taking a picture of him. You have no idea just how long I was standing there trying to decide within the confines of the checkout aisle and my peeved brain, whether I could tactfully take a picture of him. I assume by his gaze that I am nowhere near being able to play it off. I am really going to have to work on that. Perhaps the first thing should be to silence the photo snapshot sound effect that accompanies my camera shutter. Probably a good idea.

Still, he deserved to be photographer and publicly (okay, for me reading my thoughts to myself, on the web) ridiculed because he was a) in Shoppers Food Warehouse and b) writing a g-d check for six friggin' dollars and twenty-nine m-effing cents.

Ah, I feel so much better. The Double Chocolate Cookie Crisp helps too.

Moronblogging: Wal-Mart

Generally, generally self-check out registers are a good thing. I actually think they are a great thing. In most stores when I see an open self-checkout I can whip through faster than the express lane. Unfortunately, Wal-Mart is not a place where qualified self-checkers shop. What I was doing there I'll never know.

Actually I was looking for yarn for my relatively new knitting obsession. I bought some yarn at a nice knit shop but it was pretty darn expensive. I thought I'd pick up some nice, but cheap supplies at Wal-Mart. I am constantly astonished at the general slowness of the public, but Wal-Mart really is a special subset of not-so-bright.

These women (above) found scanning items to be unbelievably challenging. The computer voice kept telling them to wait for assistance. Okay, fine.

Even when "help" arrived it was clueless. Meanwhile I was strategizing about how to catch the two phenomenal ding dongs ahead of me with a phone photo without them noticing. This mom and daughter and her kid schlubbed their way all the way through the store. Then they made the mind-bending choice to use the self-check out when it was clearly a skill taught on a day they were absent from pre-school.

So I waited, breathed, and turned the volume on my Treo way down.

It sure looks like Chubbs the kid caught on, but I'm actually happy about that because hopefully it means he/it has a light on in there and may, at some point in his/its life, be able to break out of Boogerville and actually get a job, perhaps something as skilled as the cashiers working just a few feet away from us here.

When they finally managed to crack the secret scanning code (find bar code, swipe) they then decided to pay with cash. Luscious.

Oh yes, and the daughter is wearing a denim vest with matching blue jeans.

Church Sign Generator

This is too fabulous not to share:


You can make your own at: http://www.churchsigngenerator.com

Father's Day Southern Buffet

My dad is from Savannah. I remember going there as a little girl and having lots of great adventures, like sleeping in the indoor bay windows in an old inn, visiting my very old, very Southern aunts Nellie and Mamie, and going to dinner at Johnny Harris Restaurant. We would always stock up on bottles of Johnny Harris BBQ sauce. These days they have it at the Harris Teeter near me.

When it came to Father's Day I knew just what to make. Yesterday I served up a Southern feast with Johnny Harris BBQ chicken (slow cooked all day in a hastily purchased substitute slow cooker), corn on the cob, hush puppies, baked beans, and onion-corn relish. Mmmmm. I made a pitcher of Malibu Bay Breeze drinks and another of Sweet Tea. For dessert we had store bought triple mousse cake that really was surprisingly good. We've got leftovers of everything for tonight.

The Official First

So last year, my mom attempted to teach me to knit. She gave me some locally spun wool yarn which was stringy and annoying. It was scratchy. It was also grey. I just couldn't get into it. I kept dropping stitches and dreading finishing a piece with so many mistakes in it. Well, I gave it another shot this year, with more user-friendly beginner yard and a simple garter stitch and VOILA! I am so down with knitting. My cousin and her friend were coming to the country house for a visit, so I thought I should brush up before we taught them how this week. I whipped out this scarf and am ready for more.

Mom and I checked out Knit Happens in Alexandria and found a heap of great yarn. This stuff is pricey though so I'm going to have to make some of these suckers gifts.

You gotta be drunk

Or maybe high to order...

Tonight we saw a commercial for "Cuervo Black and Cola". Are you serious? Are you freaking serious? Now you want me to have Coke and tequila? Hurl. I am throwing up a little bit as I type this. Maybe it's the tequila excesses of my life from 18-28, but I can't fathom that. Thank God they didn't say Peach Schnapps though because, honestly, there is no way I can go there again.