Baa Baa Knit Stitch

>Home Again

>We’re home again, which may come as a surprise to some of you who didn’t know we were gone. 🙂 We traveled to West Virginia to see Richard’s siblings and do some work at the family business.

Richard’s from a little town in southwest WV named Man. It’s a small place nestled in coal mining country. When the mines are working, life is good. When they’re not, well, the economy suffers. The latest thing to hit the area is the advent of the Hatfield-McCoy Trail, which attracts four-wheelers from all over to ride amongst the flora and fauna of the mountains. As it turns out, Richard’s family has a history with the Hatfields: his grandfather on his mother’s side was a doctor who took care of Devil Anse Hatfield, and descendants of the Hatfields took care of Richard’s mother during her illness before she passed (wonderful ladies… I can’t tell you how grateful we were for them! I guess there’s some sort of symmetry there, eh?). During our last evening there, Richard and his siblings got into a discussion of family history; they can trace their family back to the Revolutionary War. I think they thought I was bored, but I found it fascinating. I have no such idea of my family roots except that I know two of my great-grandmothers were full Cherokee Indians. I guess one day I really need to track that down.

May I say that as a Georgia girl, born and bred looking at Georgia red clay everywhere, it’s fascinating to drive down the roads through eastern Kentucky and western West Virginia , where they’ve cut through mountains to make the roads, and see the strata of coal on either side. It’s kinda freaky to me.

We made it there safely despite a GPS system with a death wish. Evidently the GPS couldn’t handle the mountains on the Kentucky/WV line. It would freak out and lose its way, then tell me to turn left. Problem was, it kept wanting me to turn left off a bridge over a valley between two mountains. So it would say “Turn left” and I would yell “The hell I am!” at the thing. It became quite amusing for about 30 or so miles before it got its little electronic brain back.

Anyhow, the family business is a store that sells clothing, jewelry, appliances, furniture, giftware… a little bit of everything… and has been in business since dinosaurs roamed the earth. The challenge since Richard’s mom passed is the four kids now owning the business, and none of them ever planning to be running it, but yet finding themselves in the business of retail. While we were there, I installed Peachtree Accounting with the idea that they could bring some of the accounting work that’s currently being outsourced in house. Richard spent his time photographing merchandise that will be listed for sale on eBay. It’s a case of taking decades old manual systems and converting them to the 21st century. It’s going to be a challenge for all of them, but I think that with some work it will be successful. With the current energy crunch, the mines are going back to work, and that’s good for the area. Plus, the higher gas prices mean more people are shopping locally instead of driving to the next larger town which is also good news. 🙂

Business aside, it was great to visit with Richard’s sisters and brother. Oscar was indifferent to the whole thing, I think, but as usual, he was a good sport about the trip. He functioned in a supervisory role while we were working at the store, of course.

Oh, and one of the perks of marrying into a family that owns a store is being able to shop at cost. Sweet!!! Needless to say I scored major amounts of clothing to see me through the rest of the summer and got a dress to wear to a wedding next weekend. It looks like nothing else in my closet. Richard likes it. 🙂

No real pictures from the trip yet — I’m waiting on the sibs to email me pics they took of the four of them together and one with me and Oscar in it, but while we were on the road, we did see this:Spotted a hauler for Juan Pablo Montoya’s show car on the road!!! Altho there’s a lot of people who don’t like Juan Pablo, he’s my new hero since he took out the Shrub (aka Kyle Busch) in a race a couple of weeks ago and **admitted he did it**. Usually NASCAR drivers will blame a wreck on “just racing” or a mechanical issue, but Juan Pablo stood up and said that Kyle ticked him off, he’d had enough, and he wrecked him. Plus I actually think Juan Pablo’s kinda hot — Richard knows about this, and thinks Juan Pablo’s wife is kinda hot, and we decided if we had the Montoyas over for dinner the only thing that could come of it is a restraining order. 🙂

Oh, you came here to see knitting or stitching?? Yeah… that got put on hold for the trip. Light was bad where we were staying, and besides, we had no time. Check back later for pictures of ornaments for the ornament exchange tho!! 🙂

>Some Thoughts on the Fourth of July

>Ah yes… there I go thinking again. But as we approach the Fourth of July, I think it’s interesting to approach the celebration from another perspective.

I have some clients who are Japanese. His mother saw the mushroom cloud from the bomb at Hiroshima out her window before he was born. They grew up in post-war Japan, which couldn’t have been pleasant. They came here legally, built a business, raised their children, and have built a life here. And they’re absolutely delightful folks and I’m blessed to have them as clients and as friends.

She and I chat when I’m there working, and there’s rarely a time when she doesn’t tell me how grateful they are that America is such a welcoming country, and how they didn’t sense that the welcoming changed, even after the horror of 9/11. How thankful they are that they’ve been able to work hard, save, and have a good life for themselves and their children. How they’re trying to bring others over from Japan and other countries, legally, to have the same opportunity.

They work hard, have a successful business, and pay their taxes just like the rest of us. And they appreciate the chance to do so.

It just strikes me that so many people who were born here take all this for granted. They bitch and moan all the time about how tough they have it instead of looking at the opportunity around them.

So I think, as we celebrate our country this year, those of us who have been fortunate enough to be born here need to look at it through the eyes of my Japanese friends for a few minutes and see what they see.

It could give some of us a new perspective on things. I know it did for me.

>Starbucks and Yarn Swap Questionnaire!

>I’m participating in a swap called “Starbucks and Yarn”, where the swappers exchange goodies related, interestingly enough, to yarn and Starbucks coffee and tea. 🙂 The exchange also includes a handmade item. We were instructed to post the answers to our questionnaire on our blog, so here goes!!

1. Full name Jean Early
2. Ravelry ID doxietrek
3. Email address jmearly@bellsouth.net
4. Blog address (if you have one) baabaaknitstitch.blogspot.com
5. Handmade item you desire in the swap (bag, cup cozy, etc.) mug mats
6. Starbucks item you desire (gift card, mug, beans, etc.) gift card
7. Favorite Starbucks beverage/bean quad grande skinny vanilla latte
8. Favorite snack food (trying not to snack to keep the weight off!)
9. Favorite color(s) purple, teals, blues, greens
10. Favorite fragrance none, really due to asthma issues
11. What types of things do you like to knit? socks and other small items
12. Do you spin? very badly. 🙂
13. Do you dye your own yarn? no
14. Favorite yarns anything but mohair, which is evil
15. Favorite needles Knit Picks harmony circs
16. Do you have any allergies? seafood (not relevant) cigarette smoke, strong scents
17. Would you be willing to prepare an angel kit if necessary? yes
18. Do you have any special requests? just have fun gathering stuff!
19. Do you have any pets? His Royal Lowness, Oscar the dachshund
20. Is your home smoking or non-smoking? totally non-smoking!!!

>Thank You, Apple Store!

>I have an iPhone. I am seriously in love with my iPhone. It is my lifeline to my business, my family, my friends…. you get the picture.

So imagine my horror last night when I picked up said iPhone, and it slipped out of my hand. It went to the floor in that slow-motion movement that happens when you slam the door of the car and you realize that you’ve left the key in the ignition. I couldn’t catch it. It hit the floor with a sickening thud.

I retrieved it from the floor and tried to call Judy. Her voicemail acted as if it couldn’t hear me. How rude. Then I realized it actually couldn’t hear me. And the little “home” button on the phone didn’t work anymore. And I couldn’t sync it to my computer anymore.

In short, I had a nice, iPhone-shaped brick.

I dug up my old Razr, hoping I could convince AT&T to turn it back on, called my voice mail from the landline and changed the message telling people to call Bob if they had a problem, and made plans to head to the Apple store first thing in the morning.

Two very nice young (and I mean young) men met me at the door. I held out the iPhone and simply said “Make it go.” They laughed and took pity on the old grey headed woman as I explained this was my business line and I was in a heap of trouble. They made an appointment for me for noon, took the SIM card out of the iPhone and put it in the Razr so I was back in business (yay!), and I went out to kill two hours in the mall.

Did I mention that the new Vera Bradley patterns are out? And that the Night Owl is really cute? And that I now have some of it, since I was there, and it was there, and I had the time…. (I was going to link to the Vera Bradley site to show it to you, but it’s not listed yet! You’ll need to Google it because there’s a ton of people selling it on Ebay.)

Anyway, at noon I went back to the Apple store. The girl looked at my phone, and I told her what happened, and that I expected to pay for the repairs since stupidity isn’t covered under warranty. She looked at it again and said that the damage didn’t look that bad, and why didn’t she just give me a new one.

Wha?

Wowsa!!! She went and got a shiny, new, working iPhone, and set it all up for me. I told her I’d kiss her, but people would talk. I was absolutely thrilled, because I thought at a minimum they’d send it off, and in the worst case I’d have to wait till July 11 when the new ones were released and buy one of those.

I brought it home and synched it, and I’m back in business. Thank you Apple Store!!!!

Another reminder… I’m still collecting for the Race for Research. If you’d like to donate, please click here to go to our fundraising page. Thanks for your consideration!

>Retail Therapy

>Note that we were supposed to be in West Virginia right now. There was some scheduling confusion, so the trip got postponed. Unfortunately, that included my stopover in Pigeon Forge, so and that torpedoed my day of outlet shopping there.

When I called Mom to tell her that the trip had been postponed, she called back a little later with the suggestion that all of us go over to Dawsonville, GA, where there’s a perfectly adequate outlet mall, and spend the night and engage in a little retail therapy. So, this past Friday evening, Richard, Oscar and I headed to Rome, spent the night with my Mom, and on Saturday morning we went to Dawsonville for a day of shopping.

Oscar is a professional shopper. He rides around in his stroller (or his “Royal Carriage” as DF Jill terms it), and basks in the attention he attracts. This time, he determined that stroller time was quality nap time, so he curled up and went to sleep while we were shopping. I’m always amused by the double takes we get from people who see the stroller, assume it’s a baby, then realize it’s a dog. 🙂

Mom has a hard time finding clothes to fit, considering a size 2 is too large (!). (Yes, I obviously took after my father’s side of the family, where we’re all built like fireplugs.) Problem is, the clothing companies figure if you wear a size that is small, you obviously want to have a skirt cut so short that it barely covers your rear. My mother is nearly 80, and that’s just not her style. Heck, I’m only 50, and it’s not mine either. So when we can find clothes (and she prefers suits to wear to church), chances are the skirts are too short for her.

She did score a few things at one of the outlets, but it was a bit of a frustrating shopping trip for her, clothes-wise. She did much better buying tops and t-shirts to wear with her existing outfits. Plus, she scored kitchen gadgets at Williams Sonoma (where they had a really kewl ice crusher, but Richard has declared a kitchen-gadget moratorium in this house so I couldn’t get it).

I managed to find a couple of Vera Bradley Pink Elephant pieces on sale to help round out my collection. Woo Hoo! Talked to another girl who was pawing through the boxes at the Mori outlet with me. Richard rather snarkily asked if I had converted her to my “cult” of Vera Bradley, and I told him that she was already firmly in before we even spoke. Hmmmph.

But the big thing was that we spent the weekend together and had a good time. On Sunday we dropped Oscar off at our house (since we pretty much passed it on the way back to Rome) and took Mom to one of the malls here. She had a little better luck with some clothes there (or at least I hope she did — she took them home to try on, and I’ll bring back what doesn’t fit when I go up there this week).

Took Mom back home and then returned to Kennesaw. Geez, I was tired! I don’t think I’ve done that much walking in awhile. I think the exercise was good for me…even if it wasn’t for my wallet. 🙂

Just a reminder… We’re still taking donations for the Race for Research. You can link to our donations page here, and we appreciate your help!

>A little shameless begging

>Those of you who’ve known me for awhile know I lost my dad nearly 7 years ago now to a brain tumor. And those of you who went through that with me know how incredibly dark and horrible those days were, and God bless you for standing by me. For those of you who haven’t known me as long, know that my dad’s illness has had a profound effect on my life, both while he was sick and after he passed.

On July 12, Richard and I are participating in the Race for Research sponsored by the Southeastern Brain Tumor Foundation. Lest you be concerned, I’m not running anywhere… there’s a 2K walk associated with it that we’ll be participating in. We’re raising funds for research — as it turns out, there’s been less progress made with brain cancers than with cancers in any other part of the body.

By clicking here, you’ll be taken to my fundraising page where you can make a secure donation to help us toward our goal of $1000. No amount is too small, and every donation is sincerely appreciated. Money raised is earmarked for research into brain tumor treatments.

I thank you for your consideration, and I promise we’ll return to your regularly scheduled fun blog posts soon. It’s just that this is incredibly important to me, so I’m pulling out all the stops to try to make our goal.

It’s just my way of trying to make sure that no other family will ever have to go through what we did ever again. Maybe it’s a pipe dream, but I gotta try. My dad would expect no less of me.

>FINALLY!

>Just sayin’.

>A couple of finishes

>So for most of this week I’ve been down with whatever flu-like bug has been going around. Nasty stuff. I’ve quarantined my house to keep most humans away from it, because I don’t wish this joy on anybody. Felt well enough today to update the blog with a couple of finished objects:

My first amigurumi:
Disgustingly cute, isn’t it? I’ve gotta say, attaching all those legs to the octopus was a bit of a pain. Fortunately I didn’t permanently attach them until 1) I made sure they were even and 2) I made sure I had room enough for all of them. A lot of rearranging had to go on.

You’ve read about the Warm Woolies socks, so here’s the first three pairs:
I’m gonna try to get these puppies in the mail either today or tomorrow. I have a nice stash of Cascade 220 now thanks to the generosity of the folks giving me prizes from the DWTS Pool on Ravelry, so I should be able to whip up quite a few more pairs before fall.

>Which NASCAR Driver Are You?

>Take the quiz!!!

As it turns out for me….Squee!

I amuse so very easily. 🙂

>No actual children were harmed

>Where have I been? Believe it or not, I’ve been assisting at Vacation Bible School (VBS) at my church. How did I get roped into this, since most of you know I avoid children like the proverbial plague? I think it was mostly desperation on the part of the organizers. See, there were 19 children registered. Toward the end of last week, they heard rumblings that the number of attendees was going to increase, and they sent out a plea for help at church last Sunday. I qualified because I had a pulse and was willing to show up. On Monday morning, 70 kids showed up. 70. And we turned some away because we require that they complete 3 year old preschool before they can come, and folks were bringing babies that had just turned 3.

I have discovered that people use VBS as free babysitting during the summer and take their kids from one VBS program to another to get them out of the house. I guess there are worse things they could do with them. I just kinda wish they’d have told us they were coming.

So, I became the Snack Lady. My duty was to make sure that the snack du jour was ready to go when the class was ready for snack time. The theme of VBS was “Beach Party — Surfing the Scriptures”, so each day had an allegedly beach themed snack. Allegedly. I’m still not seeing how some of these tied in, but then, I didn’t actually attend any of the programs. I’m still reeling from 4 year olds shouting “Cowabunga, dude!” all morning today.

Monday’s snack was a container of blue Kool Aid jello with red swedish fish on top (get it? The fish were “swimming” in the ocean) . The kids loved it. I can’t begin to describe how disgusting it was. Seriously, I think the stuff was toxic to anyone over the age of 12. Nasty.

Tuesday’s snack was trail mix made of pretzels, graham cracker cereal, cheddar Goldfish crackers, raisins, mini chocolate chips, and marshmallows. Note: mini chocolate chips melt in 90 degree weather. Note 2: most kids don’t like raisins; I hope the wildlife around the church does, because I think a lot of them ended up on the ground. Note 3: the lack of a marshmallow in a cup of trail mix causes a Life Crisis for at least one small child. Ok. We had one bag of marshmallows and were applying the “loaves and fishes” philosophy as best we could. The lack of a marshmallow is one small disappointment in life she’s gonna have to cope with.

Wednesday’s snack was supposed to be a graham cracker covered in frosting and Alpha Bits cereal… the kids were to use the letters in the cereal to spell out a message. The curriculum didn’t take into account that Post no longer markets Alpha Bits. So they got (carefully divided into small cupcake cups so that *everyone got the same number of everything*– I wasn’t having a repeat of the Ugly Marshmallow Incident ) M&Ms, marshmallows, and Hershey’s Hugs.

Thursday’s snack should have been deceptively simple: popsicles. But noooooooo. Whoever donated the popsicles (and if you’re reading this, I apologize, but seriously, they were cheap for a reason) brought root beer flavored popsicles. Root Beer. For small children. They looked like poo on a stick. Poosicles. Even the little boys wouldn’t eat ’em, and they’ll normally eat anything when presented in disgusting terms. So I hopped in the car and headed to Publix and got normal, popsicle flavored popsicles — red, orange, purple, and green. Things went much more smoothly after that. The preacher was happy; evidently he *likes* root beer popsicles.

One little girl turned down the popsicle, explaining that she’d had enough when she’d been in the emergency room. When pressed for details, she allowed that the neighbor’s dog had bitten her and she had two stitches (pointing to the band aid covering her chin). I said “I’m sure the puppy didn’t mean to do that.” She replied “Yes he did.” That was the end of that conversation. I’m still wondering what she did to the dog (since in situations like this, I tend to come down on the dog’s side 99.5% of the time).

For our last day today, the kids got sand dollar pancakes, or the little mini pancakes. We set up an assembly line nuking pancakes, keeping ’em warm in the oven, and then putting them on plates. Trick here is to get an actual answer to the question “Do you want syrup?”, since we weren’t letting them loose with a syrup bottle themselves. The preacher came in and asked what we were having for snacks, and I told him *he* was having root beer popsicles.

So my first experience with helping with VBS is over. No children were harmed (at least not by me anyway). The kids seemed to have a good time; the people running it seemed to be glad it’s over. It was fun for the most part, but I’ll be glad to not juggle it with my client work next week. Seriously cut into my stitching and knitting time. 🙂