An award and some cogitating

First of all, one of my friends, Honi of Healthy Honi, has given me an award. I'll have to figure out what I need to do to copy it over to here to display.

There are things attached to the award, like passing it along, but I feel a bit odd about doing it. I read a few blogs of friends, but I mostly read knit blogs. I'll have to think about who I'll award.

As for the other cogitating, (and this doesn't contain a bit of knitting content) I found myself thinking about The Rose Rent by Ellis Peters this morning. Mystery on PBS certainly expanded the British mystery authors I've read over the years. Because of Mystery and Sir Derek Jacobi I have read all of the Brother Cadfael mysteries. When I read them, I automatically picture Cadfael as Sir Derek, and I'm quite all right with that. He's a marvelous actor whom you have seen in Gladiator, but to me he'll always be Cadfael (even though he was also a damn good Claudius. I won't say you must see I, Claudius, but I found it most enjoyable.)

However, I digress, so back to The Rose Rent. If you have ever read one of Cadfael's mysteries, you will find that Ms. Pargeter did have a formula that she followed. This may be a spoiler if you've not read or seen them, but many involve wrongful accusations with only Cadfael and Hugh Beringar really looking for justice. In many ways Cadfael is a very early CSI. There is also a lot of romance in them. For example, Summer of the Danes always seemed to me to be a romance novel with a murder thrown in. It really would make a great Harlequin, complete with the handsome, strapping Viking on the cover. The Rose Rent is one of my favorites, and I think it's because it doesn't deal with teenage romance. The couple involved in this mystery are older. They've both suffered from hardships and losses. Neither is drop dead gorgeous either. It seems more real than some of the other ones. I guess as I grow older I don't always want to read about willowy teenagers with rose petal lips. Love isn't always a lightening bolt. Sometimes is just seems to sneak in, like the fog, on little cat feet.

If I had never seen the Brother Cadfael series on Mystery, I don't know that I would have picked one up at the library to read. Through Mystery I have discovered Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse and P.D. James's Adam Dalgliesh. Seeing those names floating around from cover comparisons I've found Elizabeth George (who's latest Lynley novel comes out in spring 2008) and Ruth Rendell.

So many of us, and I'm guilty of it, spend a lot of time surfing. I read other blogs; I peruse Amazon for hours; and now there's Ravelry to consume large amounts of time. While I enjoy all that, sometimes I just want to sit down and read a book. I just realized I've left out the author who started my love of the British murder mystery, Dame Agatha Christie. She's still the best for the quick, light read where the bad guy always gets caught. Ooh, here's the knitting content. Miss Marple can solve that case from her armchair while knitting baby sweaters.

I guess what I really wanted to do was to express my love for the written word. I find I may use a word that is archaic just because I like it. Perhaps it seems I structure my sentences strangely as I look to use the proper grammar instead of the conversational colloquialisms. I do love to read books, especially ones that will include words I've got to go look up. Here on my blog I get a chance to improve my writing skills. I'm not always very good. I may jump from subject to subject. I try to not ramble on too long knowing that I may lose your interest. I do agonize over my messages sometimes, re-reading them over and over to make sure they flow. It is like knitting in that I can create my sentences on this page, and if they don't flow as I like, I can make them disappear as easily as ripping out stitches.

Still reading? It's time to sign off and go read a book. Take a trip back in time and read Murder in Mesopotamia by Agatha Christie. Go meet Lynley and Havers by picking up A Great Deliverance by Elizabeth George (although I'll admit Missing Joseph is one I've read several times). From Doon with Death is the first Inspector Wexford and has some surprising twists. Or go find what you like to read, whether it's a cookbook, knitting book or maybe a trashy biography, and settle down for a good read. After all, there's a writer's strike going on, and there won't be anything but reruns on TV very soon, and you can't spend all your time on the computer.

As for me, My Name is Earl is new tonight, and I've got a lot of knitting to do.

Wow, that was quick!

Poor Sassy. She's been one smelly hound dog. She's like any dog, digging a nice dirt wallow and getting covered with red clay dust. Pulling her blanket into the damp, then lying on it so it gets good and stinky. Because of the drought and her extreme amounts of fur, she hasn't had a bath in a while. We didn't want to bathe her in the tub since we thought all the fur would clog the drain.

I called my vet to make a grooming appointment for her and for Monster (who needs a clip under her tail - long haired kitties have "bloomers" which catch things.) Boo Hoo! Pamela, who I liked very much, has left. Now what do I do? Lee suggested I call Sonya's Mobile Grooming. I did, and her groomer was able to come today. It took Erica less than an hour to do 2 sanitary clips (Grey got one too) and bathe Sassy. I was duly impressed. Much less anxiety for kitties and humans. (Sassy wasn't anxious. She got to check out some new smells and meet someone nice.) I'll definitely use them again.

Now for knitting content. I had planned to buy all my gifts this year, but then I caved and decided to make one. I'm pretty sure she doesn't read my blog, so here it is.These are Petra's fingerless gloves in Dream in Color's Smooshy. The color is Some Summer Sky. This first one is knitting up pretty quickly, and it would be even faster if I hadn't had to rip it out since I crossed one of the cables the wrong way. Yes, I can drop stitches and fix cables, but I haven't done it on yarn this thin, and I decided ripping would be just as fast.

Here's the watermelon that grew spontaneously in our front yard. Keith cut it up over the weekend. We promptly forgot about it until today, so I'll taste it later and let you know how it is.

This is the yarn I dyed last week. The color is slightly washed out due to the flash. The green is much richer. I've wound one into a ball, and I'll take a picture of it to post later.

Forgot to add a gratuitous cat picture

You know he's thinking I look damn good for nearly 17! And I love sitting in the sun, soaking up the rays and smelling these sweet, sweet flowers. (Note he's also sitting in the highly invasive spearmint.)

It's been a helluva week.

As I've mentioned before, mainly because finding out I have a chronic, permanent condition, no matter how easily managed, is never what one wants to hear, I've got hypothyroidism, and now I get to experiment with synthroid dosing. (Sorry for the very long and most likely incorrect grammatically sentence.)

So the first week I took 1/2 dose, only 25 mcg. It seemed fine, but the doctor had prescribed 50 mcg, so week 2 I started taking that. Now I've had a little stress with the neighborhood watch stuff, my co-coordinator and the whole inviting the news thingy, but normally I could handle it. This time I went basically bananas. I was in nice terms a basket case. What the hell was wrong with me? I never had PMS so bad that I should be committed. All of a sudden it hit Keith and I almost simultaneously, what about the medication? I checked it out online and found that anxiety, nervousness and emotional instability were all side effects of getting too much and overstimulating your system. I immediately cut back to the 25 mcg. I feel better already. I prefer a calm life with little or no drama, and this past week has been no fun at all. Sorry to the family for being a sullen little bitch on Thanksgiving, but I had to refrain from talking. Who knows what would have come out of my mouth?

Last weekend we went to a wedding in my hometown of Birmingham. Being the weird, socially awkward kid I was, I heartily disliked growing up there. (It's an over sized small town) As an adult, I never had any reason to go back. Sure, I had some friends and family still there, but I disliked Birmingham so much I avoided going as much as politely possible. Luckily Keith and I have both worked in retail related jobs off and on for a very long time, so it is difficult for us to find time off together when it's convenient for other people too.

I had to go to this wedding. Unlike my brother's wedding, Keith was healthy this time. (We missed Brett's wedding after Keith took a faceplant in Lake Lanier while skiing. He got an awful infection in the inside of his nose. We're talking swelling, fever and at least 2 rounds of antibiotics to get it under control. His nose make W.C. Fields' nose look good.) I honestly wondered how this wedding would make me feel. I love my friend and wish her nothing but the best, but I'd be going to so many of those old places where I felt like an alien visiting earth for the first time. I was so surprised to find that I enjoyed seeing these old places. I had fun, and I am so happy that Honi had a very lovely wedding. She looked radiantly happy and beautiful.

We stayed with my brother and his wife. I haven't met his wife but once or twice before, but I really like her. They have just the coolest house ever. It's one of those "modern" ones, and it's just fabulous. They've had the top floor remodeled so that it's almost like one long continuous open space with just some artfully placed walls to keep the kitchen out of the master bedroom. Most, if not all, of the floors have been replaced with bamboo flooring which is just gorgeous. He and Mindi have their own event planning company that they do in addition to their day jobs, and they had a huge event that weekend. We didn't get to visit nearly as long as I would have liked, but I had a great time seeing them, and getting to know Mindi better. If they have a website for their event planning, I'll add it to the sidebar.

For those of you on Ravelry, I've updated some of my projects and yarns with pictures. I'm still learning Flickr, so bear with me.

Oh, before I forget, I've been taking those dye classes. It is so much fun. I dyed 2 skeins of sock yarn last week, and I'll get pictures up as soon as I take some that show the colors properly. There is one more class to take, immersion dying. I'm taking some Lamb's Pride Bulky in a color I don't much like and overdying it to see what I get. I will say this about dying. It is a water intensive hobby, and I think I won't be doing any of it at home until this drought eases. I can wait - I've got a lot of knitting to do. Just look at my queue.

He's back!!

The problem is, I'm not sure which one he is. And you might well wonder about whom I am speaking? It's one of my orange feral boys. When Mr. Chubbikins and Lily showed up, the orange kitty family was driven off repeatedly. For some time now, probably several months, I've only seen Momcat, and I don't see her regularly. So this morning I was quite surprised to see an orange tuxedo boy out there. I'm just not sure if it's Dadcat or Tux. I doubt I'll find out either since whichever it was ran off. I startled him, and he startled me. I'll just make sure enough food is out so he can eat once I get the wild grey cat back inside.

I'll blog more later. It's been a really busy week with all sorts of drama (not fun), a wedding and my very first dyed-by-me sock yarns. Next post will be complete with pictures.

Thanks to Stuff on my cat I now check out this site too. The Daily Kitten I just love kittens. I'm very diligent about spay and neutering, but sometimes I just want to play with kittens. I'm just a sucker for such a sweet face with needlesharp claws.

Knitting withdrawal

I feel like I've been megabusy this past week, and I've hardly knitted at all. I remember knitting last Saturday (Britcoms) night, Sunday (Fox cartoons) night and at Knit Nite on Wed. Other than that, I don't remember doing any at all. When I have been knitting, I've been working on the cable wrap to get it finished. I must confess here that I really love the tiny needles and tiny stitches of socks. I know those first socks felt like they took bloody forever, but even then I enjoyed the tinyness of them. At least I do feel like I make progress on the cable wrap because I can think "I've done 4 cable rows tonight" which translates into a fair amount of progress. Perhaps I'm at the event horizon where it feels like the wrap isn't getting bigger, nor the yarn used is decreasing the ball size. (yes, have a snicker here if you must - I said ball size)

I must admit that I, like most of my neighbors, was reluctant to take on the task on being neighborhood watch coordinator. Honestly, it's a lot of work. I was 30 minutes late to work yesterday because when you get an email from the police department that says call me, I need to speak to you, you stop what you're doing and call. Turns out we were on the news the other night. This is not what the reporter had told Rosa, but I'm of the school of thought when do reporters tell the truth? Especially if the news channel they work for really needs some filler material? I truly didn't know I was so very cynical about the news until this all happened. As for the story, it focused on the more negative and sensational aspects with a mention of the community banding together. They ended it by mentioning 2 armed robberies on the street. Luckily the detectives had already told us about this, and as they involved pizza deliveries to vacant houses, well, we as a neighborhood really have some work to do. But it does bother me because really, would you move into an area that you saw on the news being described as having increasing crime? Does the average person realize that crime is on the increase nationwide? Not just in our moderate little neighborhood, but in the ones where there's more money too?

Anyway, I have work to do coordinating the block captains, being the liason with the police department and gathering information for both the p.d. and the neighborhood. Luckily I really like spreadsheets, mysteries and puzzle solving. Although I'm not thrilled about the amount of time it's taking from knitting, I really think I'll be good at this.

Hmm, now that I think of it, I haven't even been able to surf Ravelry very much this week. Next week won't offer much relief as I have the second dye class, some Thanksgiving food prep, then the event itself.

I probably won't do any pictures tomorrow since I've not done enough work on anything to make picture taking worthwhile.

I love it when a plan comes together

Ok, I have watched the original A-Team in the past. Anyway, we had our first neighborhood watch meeting last night, and the woman from the office of public safety brought along the assistant precinct commander and 2 detectives who work in our area.

I have to say how thrilled and proud I am of my little neighborhood. It's small, only 51 houses, and we packed that room with representation from maybe 50% of the homes. There are other people who want to be involved, but were unable to attend. The asst. precinct commander said he hadn't been to one of these that had so many men there in a long time too.

One of our residents had been emailing a local tv station for some time now, and while I was at work my co-coordinator Rosa called me and said the reporter wanted to interview us at 4 p.m. WTF?! Neither one of us had known this other person had contacted the media, and quite honestly I don't want to be on tv. I was on once when I was about 18, and I know I sounded like a complete idiot. I must admit that the station that wanted to do the interviewing is one that always finds the most ignorant person they can to make a statement about whatever it is that has happened. Exploitative. I said no, that she could do it if she wanted, but I would have nothing to do with it. I wasn't going to help them fill their useless 1 hour newscast. I said a lot of other stuff too that surprised me coming out of my mouth. (I had no idea that I had some of these latent conservative types of feelings, but then again, it wasn't The News Hour who wanted to interview us either.) Perhaps most importantly, public speaking is not my forte, and being filmed for a potential filler spot or human interest story would make my nervousness much worse. Rosa called me later and said she had taken care of it.

The reporter also called the woman at the ofc of public safety, who then proceeded to call Keith to find out what was going on. Honestly, all of us were caught off guard with this. I later found out that the news station involved is doing pieces on communities that are working together for improvements. However, I personally feel like we as a community need to start working together, along with our local government, to handle these crimes of opportunity that have been happening here. I don't need or want (at this time) an inflammatory news station to be involved. The interesting thing is that Rosa thought doing the interview would be a great idea. Honestly, she could have done it without me, and I wouldn't have minded a bit. I personally feel that we do need to work within the channels available to us first and give them time to work. A reporter is out for a story, and the story is better with controversy, and I personally think that reporters can be intrusive and antagonistic (look at Princess Di.) We will get better results if we can work together in a cooperative atmosphere. If we're not getting the results we want, we can always go to local media later.

Can you tell I wasn't at all happy about this? So I think we're going to be able to have this meeting quietly, but as we're leaving to get to the church, there's a guy filming our street sign. Later, at the church, the cameraman and reporter showed up. The room we're in is small, and our group is large and spilling into the hallway. The cameraman tries to come in with that giant camera, and Rosa asked him to leave since it was disruptive. He was snippy with her, but he left. They hung around and questioned some of the residents as they were leaving. I don't know how many they spoke to, nor do I really care. All I know is that I was able to get in front of the group without totally freaking out from the stress of public speaking. I am very excited about it, and now we know a lot more about what the police department needs from us to help them to help us.

There's a lot more work ahead for us. Will I ever get time to knit again? This week has been slim on the knitting time, and next week doesn't look much better for me.

Gratuitous cat picture

Keith and his girls

I went to a dye class last night, the first in a 3-part series taught by local dyer Gale Evans. I had a great time and hopefully not a new obsession. I think it is very useful to understand more about this fiber world that has consumed me, and I love learning new things. I got to experiment with dyes and see that they don't turn out like I think they will. And since I was playing around, I didn't take notes as I should have, and I developed a gorgeous olivy gold color by accident that I was later able to reproduce. I know the components, now I have to be more scientific about it.

I got home around 10, then spent a long time on the phone with my brother. When I get off the phone, I hear "Lily, get out of there! Grey! Grey, leave her alone!" followed by sounds of rustling. Keith decided if you can't get them to behave, play with them. I found this:





Don't worry. We leave the shredder unplugged because this sort of activity happens. The long white thing Keith is holding is what he calls a "twizzler". It's just a piece of 8.5x11 paper twisted as long as possible so your hand won't get clawed. It's currently the cat toy of choice in the house, but only when there is a human attached to the other end. Also note that Keith has left his computer case dangerously close to the corrugated clawing pad. He later moved it since it is a favorite napping spot, but it's not very professional covered with catnip bits and massive amounts of wispy gray fur.

Finally, Honi, here's your birthday present in progress. You can click on it to enlarge it to mind-numbing detail of the cables and color. Happy belated birthday!

100!

This is my 100th post, and it's a No Picture Sunday. I was outside in the brisk, around 40F, fall air taking pictures when the batteries went kaput. No pictures for here, nor can I post any of my stash to Ravelry. Boo hoo.

Honi, you'll just have to wait until later today or tomorrow to see your belated birthday present. If all goes well, I'll bring it for your wedding. If not, I'll mail it by Hanukah.

Today is also the day I start on the synthroid. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous about it. The doctor said it might make me jittery, and if so, to take less. I was talking to Mom about it last night, and she said when determining dosing for this sort of thing it's really all experimental. You have to see what the patient needs, and the only way to do this is to start dosing them and see what happens. Why does this make me think of House? Actually, I've just been through this in the other direction with Brownie this past spring. That's why she needed bloodwork done once a month until the dosage was determined to be correct. Luckily unlike the cat I know what's going on, and I can change that dosage myself (within reason, and I can communicate with the doctor.) I'm changing the subject here because I'm not quite ready to think of Brownie and Pixel without tearing up.

Later today I'm meeting with Rosa to firm up the agenda for the neighborhood watch meeting, and we have to give out flyers probably today. As far as I can tell, I think one of the rental houses that most in the neighborhood thought was a part of the problem is now vacant. There is another one where the people living around it have had to call the police more that once, but we'll have to work on them one at a time. Honestly, is it really that hard to not steal from your neighbors?

Well, I had planned to wax poetic on knitting projects this morning, and since there are none here, I'm off to do something useful until I get new batteries for the camera. Hi ho laundry and away!

The answer is here

and I have Hashimoto's. That's a type of hypothyroidism that is caused by an autoimmune disorder. At least I know now, and I get to start on synthroid next week. The doctor will call it in tomorrow since she's on call this weekend, and I'll probably start on Sunday to see how it works for me.

As for Ravelry - yikes! I've been having a great time adding yarn, adding to my queue, and seeing what other people are knitting. Tonight I found a group of vampire fan knitters. Of course I joined. I read Dracula when I was 11. I think that freaked my teacher out.

Cat's workshop, part 2

The Coriolis sock really is an easy sock to do and does give you an very cool looking sock.

Cat does her heels differently from any of the ones I've done. I'm wondering if I would have to do the heel her way or could I do the usual PGR heel that I do.

I think the best thing about her workshop was that she said she wanted it and the book to be a starting place for us to do new things. I think this is true for many knitters, not all, but many of us reach a point where we say I like this pattern, but I would change... We use the pattern as a guideline or inspiration, but we don't follow it word for word. I felt like that about this class. I like this sock, but... and in my mind (or out loud in one case) I would change this and this.

I just plain, flat out had a great time in the class.

I said I spotted myself in another blog, so here's the link. You have to scroll down because I'm in one of the last pictures in the post.

As for Ravelry, yikes! I have to learn how to set up and use Flickr (which I'm sure is easy - I just have to do it.) I've loaded a few projects in, and I want to get the pictures up to go with them. I'd best get moving since I gotta work today. Why, oh why haven't I won the Mega Millions yet? And yes, I do know it works a helluva lot better if I'd actually buy tickets.

Cat's workshop

I will admit that during workshops I get busy listening and executing the knitting instructions, and at the end I have a difficult time remembering all that I heard and saw. Thus I beg your forgiveness if this blog entry is less detailed or as long as you might like.

Cat spoke for a few minutes about sock architecture and the arch expansion, the we dove right into the first learning sock. Let me state here that I had some misgivings about this class before I signed up. The blurb said it was a good class for someone who had never knit a sock as well as someone who had knit socks. I've knit several pairs, around 10ish, I think, so I was a bit worried that I may be a little more advanced than the student the class was aimed towards. However, I really wanted to take a class from Cat, and as I have Tuesdays off, that made my decision for me. I did learn some really excellent tips and tricks in this class and just had a great time.

The first learning sock is the Little Sky Sock from New Pathways for Sock Knitters. Cat taught us the mother/grandmother increase, which I had learned when I took the class from Annie Modesitt this past spring. That was a good thing since I was able to help the students sitting around me. I did have the decency to tell them I had learned that increase during another workshop (and therefore I'm not a knitting prodigy.) The Little Sky Sock went very quickly, and I was able to get mine completed before we started on the Coriolis. (That was were the sockknitting experience was very helpful. I'm not sure how many others were able to get finished. It's not that I'm that fast a knitter - I just didn't have to frog anything.)

While at Knit Nite at Needle Nook I spoke to Mary Jane whom I had sat with at Cat's, and we did wonder about the people who had never knit socks before. In my opinion, I'm not sure that would have been the best class for someone who's never knit a sock before, but it really depends on the knitter.

To begin the Coriolis Cat taught us Judy's Magic Cast On. What a dream that is! I've learned and taught the Turkish cast on, which gives you a beautiful toe for toe up socks, but this one is even less fiddly and gives you very similar results. I wouldn't do a slip knot to start it though since I think that would bother me. You can wrap your yarn in such a way that you don't need a slip knot (thank you Meg Swansen).

Gotta go for right now and get breakfast while it's hot. More later.

Brief post

Hi all,

I really wanted to let you know just how much fun Cat's workshop was on Tuesday, but today when I woke up I felt like my scalp muscles had shrunk 2 sizes overnight. I spent all day Tuesday at the workshop knitting, I knitted when I got home, I toted and lifted all day at work yesterday, and knitted all night last night. Too much for my no longer 20 year old muscles. At least I hope that's all it was. For not only were my muscles too tight, I had that light sensitivity and nausea that come with the ever so much fun migraine.

I feel much better now, but I've spent much time resting in a darkened room. The worst was not being sleepy and thinking about knitting without being able to try out the bizarre things I was thinking. Cat had done gone and stretched my brain in funny ways!

Anyway, just dealing with "ghost" pain now. I'm heading back to bed for awhile in order to rest and to fulfill my duty to provide warmth and a place to rest a furry head to the catkins. Hopefully later tonight I provide you with a better post about what a great time I had on Tuesday. I had so much fun I didn't take pictures, but I found myself on another blog's post.

Ravelry!

I got my invitation this morning. I don't have time to set anything up yet. My name there is Catmagnet.

Doctor's visit

I had the physical today, complete with fasting for the bloodwork. The nurse was quite nice and took me to the kitchen for coffee after taking 4 vials of blood. Now to wait and see if I really am hypothyroid. The doc said my thyroid felt slightly enlarged (symptom). She also said that when I go on thyroid replacement hormone I will probably lose weight (yippee!) My cholesterol is still in the normal range, but on the high side (another hypothyroid symptom). That can be resolved by watching what I eat and exercise. I'll have to go back to oatmeal instead of fried eggs with tortillas.

We have found a place other than my house for the neighborhood watch meeting. I'm thrilled since keeping up with sweeping/vacuuming pet hair is a full time job around here. Double coated dogs and cats shed like mad. All it takes is one of those types of critters in the house, and it's like an episode from when fur'n'dust bunnies attack.

Less than 24 hours to go before I get to take a class with Cat Bordhi. Keith is being a lovely, wonderful husband and driving me down there so I don't have to mess with parking. He's also said he was going to take my van to the $4 car wash. Like I said, I haven't washed it in months, and it's starting to look really bad. Some of the car washes recycle their water - I hope this is one of them.

That's all for now. I've vacuumed, and now it's time to mop.

Trip back last week.

I've been kind of busy this week, what with staying late for Knit Nite and Knitting Guild and errand running and just life in general.

I knit up a hat for the class I'll be teaching in a few weeks, but I forgot to photograph it.

So here are a couple of pictures of North Carolina wilderness areas. We decided to come home through Highlands, so when we left Fletcher we headed west on I-40. (I think that's the highway number - I'm working from memory here.) We got off at one of the exits for Waynesville and headed south towards Franklin. The mountains were looking green, gold, red and just lovely as we drove through, over and around them. When we got married all those years ago, we spent our first night of our camping honeymoon in Franklin. This time we didn't stop, but turned onto a scenic highway heading into Highlands. This road is one of those narrow, skinny roads with the ocassional scary drop off right on the passenger side, depending which direction you are heading. I had the scary drop offs to look over now and again. The drought has affected this area, but there are still some waterfalls.

This one we nearly passed. It's on the side of the road where there is a tiny pullover with no warning that it's a scenic overlook. The autumn sun made photographing it a bit difficult since there were deep shadows and really bright sunlight.

Here we are at Bridal Veil Falls. I'm across the street against some fall foliage. I see one goldish tree in the background.

Here are the falls themselves. You can drive behind the falls (which we did since we nearly passed them) I'm standing there for scale. (I'm the tiny white, black and blue thing in the picture.)

We drove on down to Highlands and got out to roam around the town for a little bit. Asheville, while also full of tourists, has a very different feeling. It reminded me more of my only trip to Colorado with younger people in jeans and hiking boots drinking locally brewed beers hanging out at the pubs. The art galleries go from high end interesting things to places where anyone can rent space and show things that a 5th grader could do better. Highlands reminded me of Alpharette or Buckhead. I was not thin enough, blond enough or covered in enough gold to really be there. I looked like I belonged more in Asheville. Of course, I find these displaced Buckhead Betties to be really quite hilarious in their absurd attempts to maintain their youth only to turn into sideshow freaks with the botox and plastic surgery. We saw one woman, thin with long hair who looked youngish from behind who looked like she stepped out of Tales from the Crypt when she turned around. Needless to say, Highlands will not be my first place to visit again.

One of the local knit shops has a small Highlands location, and we looked for it while we roamed around. I had heard the location was unfortunate, being off the main drag. We saw a sign for it that led us between two buildings, across the back parking lot and to a small patio. There we saw the shop, closed since it was Sunday. I looked through the windows to attempt to see the inside when behind me I hear a very familiar sound. From somewhere a cat has appeared and is meowing at me, not Keith, to pet it. My very aura must say "Catslave". I did as I was commanded since the kitty was quite plump, well-groomed and wearing a collar with tags. He or she seemed nice. I know I didn't pet it as much as it wanted, but since I know well petted cats get agitated and nip, I stopped before I was bitten. Kitty followed us back towards the other building and luckily for me, since I would worry, stopped before we got too far.

We found a barbecue place about 2 blocks off the main street. It had been recommended to us by some kids working in the grocery store. Not quite what we were looking for since I prefer those slightly divy places with a strange collection of pig items. The food was good, and the restrooms were clean, and both those things are quite important.

After that we headed back home through Dillard and down towards I-85.

I have an all day knitting workshop coming up this week with Cat Bordhi. I'm quite looking forward to it. Hopefully it will make up for the physical, complete with fasting blood test that I also have to look forward to this week. It will be nice to know if I'm really hypothyroid, or if it was something out of balance that particular day.

Until later.