How about a little detail?

Love the pattern, hate the yarn. I tell you truly that I will never ever use Crystal Palace’s Breeze again as long as I live. Not even if they were giving the stuff away. Here’s why:

• Discolors when you look at it crooked.*
• The finished fabric is stiff and doesn’t drape well.
• Splity.
• It is plied with a wicked twist that causes an occasional spate of awkward-looking stitches. Yes, I know that you can counteract this by knitting off of the ball backwards or some other wierdness. But at these prices, should you have to?

Any one of these qualities is a Deal Breaker for me. Taken together, this yarn has earned a spot right next to Wildflower DK on the Yarns Emily Hates List of Infamy. It’s not a very long list. I tend to love yarn.

I also finished up the Yoga Mat Bag from that Target kit!

See how much I can get done when I have the time?

I’ve also got a full length shot. Doesn’t the lime green look great with my turquoise shorts? I’ll get it in the mail to you quickly, Darling Sister. I bet it’s just what you wanted!

*This sweater is a remake of a green one that did some crazy fading. I had never even worn it! The swatch faded (which should have been my first clue about what would happen to the finished product). I’ve never had that happen before – or even anything close. I contacted the manufacturer to try and figure out what was wrong. After quite a run around, I ended up sending the sweater (with swatches and leftover yarn) to them. They sent me a new batch of yarn. I didn’t blog about this the first time because I didn’t want to run around screaming and defaming anybody. Not that I have that kind of Pied Piper Quality, but I take reccomendations from other bloggers seriously. I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it was me. Maybe I excrete something special that only affects Breeze. Plus, I am sure there are people out there who LOVE this yarn. There are lots of colors and it does have a cushier hand than many cottons. So, I tried again. There are already a couple of spots on the new sweater that are discoloring to purple. So far, the spots are in the seams so I may get to wear Remembering Honey at least once this time around…

We’re back! When taken as a whole, the week of SUUSI was a Great Success. We only had five bandaids, two bonked heads, one maintenance man who wanted to use a wet vac by the nursery, two no-show staffers, no vegetarian options at Friday’s picnic (not our fault), an incomplete t-shirt order, and one kid who thought it would be fun to hang from a dumpster truck WHILE IT WAS MOVING. I got very little sleep and did even less knitting.

Since we’ve been home I have swatched for Empire Dreams.

I heart Cotton Fleece.

I’ve got the swatches blocking alongside Remembering Honey – I finally finished that side seam.

I hate it when I have to use the flash. Everything looks so ugly.

The yoga bag is about like it was before I left. I am going to work on it a little more today while I catch up on all of the TV we missed list week. There is just No Time to watch the news at SUUSI – we did check the Tropical Update until Wednesday. After Wednesday, we figured no storms could get to Bay Minette before we got home, and stopped paying attention. Thank you for all of the good thoughts that created weather patterns leading AWAY from here.

The baby birds have gone. I regret missing their flight lessons. I am sure the cats enjoyed it tremendously (didn’t miss a second!) and that gives me some consolation. Kitty Boo has been given the name “Lucy.” After First Lady Lucy Hayes. This means we get to keep her. Which is great because we love her (she is wedged behind me in the chair – I have to sit on the very edge), but not great because I am beginning to think that we have Too Many Cats. I am trying to conteract the sick feeling in my stomach by reminding myself that we know someone who has eleven. She always looks so tired…

PS I am a Big Fan of the space program!

We got our power back this afternoon! Michael made a pitiful call to the phone company (after we received three automated calls to tell us our power was back) about how we didn’t want to be forgotten again (Ivan). So the Power Guys came over and lit us up. I heart Power Guys! I want to hug every one I see! Becky, I’m sure they are coming to light you up soon! Want to see the reason our power was out?

That’s the only tree we lost. Of course.

Not having power for MUCH longer that any of our neighbors seems to be our Hurricane Tradition. Our only other storm damage (aside from the usual limbs and leaves) was this disturbing leak.

Since Dennis came ashore in the daylight, and we had the western side (which means that all our wind was NNE)*, we got to watch the whole thing from the front room windows. Which was pretty cool. The cats lined up in the windows and Angus kept begging to go out. Kitty Boo slept through almost everything. Elizabeth’s yoga bag doubled in size.

The baby birds and their mom weathered the storm just fine. You can see their nest much better than before, and I am not sure that my Fluffy Ruffle Fern is going to recover, but mom and all four babies are just fine.

Now, I want to harness all of your prayers and well-wishes and focus them on another common goal: TS Emily and her little wanna-be buddies. We here on the Northern Gulf Coast would like a break. We would like them all to go to an uninhabited area of Mexico for a little while. At least until I get home from camp.

*That little jiggle straight North really lessened the impact for Bay Minette. The sudden track change combined with the compactness of the most intense winds caused us to miss the worst of it by about 15 miles. Atmore, AL (about 20 miles from us) took a beating instead. This is just too sad – they had tornados during Ivan and had a really rough time afterwards.

At this time tomorrow we won’t have any electricity. I believe that I’ve said that before. With any luck, it will be back on before it was with Ivan. Dennis should be here tomorrow afternoon. Great Gran is at the Farm this time. My Uncle Bruce and Aunt Patti have moved to Mary Esther and evacuated this way. I think she is happy to be able to stay in her own home (sometimes we have responsibilities after the hurricanes, so we can’t go out and stay at the Farm because we might not be able to get back) but I really miss having her here with us. She’s got a generator and Uncle Bruce knows how to start it, so I am sure they will be fine. God Bless the guy who invented cell phones!

We’re supposed to leave for camp on Thursday. It’s enough to make a girl swear. Don’t tell my mom.

Here is a little bit of fun news, though: the eggs have hatched!

The picture is blurry beucase I really had to zoom –
their mother is just looking for a chance to poke out my eyes.

I was afraid to move the plant to a safer place because I don’t want their mom to abandon them. While I was putting everything in the garage, I battened their tiny hatches as best I could.

That’s two bags of clay and the bottom part of a jack. I hope it’s enough.

The back porch is pretty sheltered and on the northside of the house. I hope that they will be OK. The cement thing beside the bird penthouse weighs about 900 pounds. I felt it would be just fine there. And I just couldn’t drag it another step.

I’ve got 2 inches on the yoga bag. I’d take you a picture, but the batteries are out of the camera and charging. I am getting ready to take a shower, watch some TV and knit until I am really, really tired and ready for bed. In the morning, I anticipate ripping out all of the mistakes I make tonight because I am already really, really tired. It will give me something to do in the bunker tomorrow.

Remember that canoe trip I told you about? It was supposed to be a three hour easy thing down Juniper Creek. But no one had bothered to go down the first part since Ivan, so it was chock full of trees and logs and new rapids. Several places you had to get out, shove your boat over the log and then hop back in. Because of all of this it took SIX hours to get down this creek. We gained a little more experience than we thought we would.

This is everyone stopped for a breather. The green boat is ours!

We took the canoe out in the water in front of Mary Esther, too. I discovered this in my camera when I got home! Uncle Bruce must have taken it from the porch. He’s cool that way.

I didn’t end up taking any of my Works in Progress with me to Mary Esther. Instead, I visited the Target across the street and picked up one of those “Knit This” kits. Just to see. I got the yoga bag one – it’s rated a “3” on the difficulty scale so I figured it might be moderately interesting.

And it is. Here’s all the stuff that comes with it.

I haven’t watched the “How To Knit” DVD (I know about that), but the instructions appear to be clear. The pattern spells out how to do the stitch (it’s fairly complex) as well as giving the abbreviations. I thought that was a nice touch.

For some reason, even though this is not a tricky project for me, I’ve had to start over twice. It’s a little embarrassing and my only excuse is that I’ve got a lot of other things on my mind: SUUSI, Dennis, Starvin’ Marvin (the Hunting Dog that we were feeding*), and the little Kitty Boo** that we found out in the woods while we were tending to Marvin. So this is as far as I’ve gotten:

My biggest complaint is that there is No Way you could get 114 stitches on the 12 inch needles that come in the kit. But I am sure that they work just fine for all of the other projects. I’m going to send the bag to my Darling Sister if I ever finish.

And for all you Weather Nerds, Cindy is mostly gone from our area. It hasn’t rained for several hours but it is still Quite Grey and Seriously Breezy.

*We pick up a lot of strays. About half of the ones we find have families that are looking for them. When we discovered Marvin at the end of the dirt road to Great Gran’s house, he looked like a shrink-wrapped skeleton. We fed him for four or five days (Did those days make a difference!) before animal control could come and pick him up – he wasn’t a Vicious Animal. In fact, he is a Darling Sweetie Pie, but not fond of leashes so we couldn’t get him into the truck. He IS a hunting dog so what do you expect? They don’t learn to do the leash thing. Animal Control came for him yesterday and the fellow mentioned that if Marvin didn’t have a family, he had a buddy who loved Hunting Dogs. So I think Marvin will have a happy ending.

**Kitty Boo (a nick name – I am not all allowed to give her a real name since we are supposed to be finding her a home) was out there screaming and wouldn’t come close to us. So we ran back to Great Gran’s and got tuna and White Socks’ carrier and lured her into it. Kitty Boos are naive that way. Now she is in Michael’s office bathroom (his office is off of the garage). Full of kitten food. And purring.

Here comes the soapbox. You don’t get them often, but sometimes I just can’t help myself:
It takes the Lowest Kind of Person to be mean to an animal. Humans spent hundreds of years domesticating animals – making them dependant on us! – it is our obligation to take care of them now. Report strays. If you have animals that you don’t want: DON’T JUST DROP THEM OFF, take them to a shelter! They can’t take care of themselves. Donate to your local shelter (if you need some knitted ideas, google for “Critter Knitter”). Support “no kill” shelters if you can find them. Spay and neuter your pets. Feed those feral cats (and capture/release spay/neuter them if you are feeling generous – this gets pricey). You don’t have to take one home with you to make a difference.