It’s been nearly a week since my last posting and I don’t have a whole lot to show for the week.
No real progress on the little sweater, a total of three people have quit the restaurant in the past three weeks and we’re running at the minimums to keep it open. One of the counter gals worked 16 hours overtime this past week and with only two kitchen closers, my hours keep butting up to the 40 hour work week and sometimes flowing over. Only good news is that I got another $.25/hour raise (now @ $10/hour), but with that comes that additional requirement that I get a OLCC (Oregon Liquor Control Commission) alcohol servers permit and start pouring beer and wine.
Because I pulled money out of my retirement account last year to pay off some bills (and didn’t have enough held out for taxes), my tax bill this year is over $3.000 for federal/state taxes. 
And, of course, I don’t have an extra $3,000 laying around in an account to pay it off, so… I dropped a $100 check in each tax return and started the process to pull more cash out of retirement. This time I’ll make sure enough money is withheld to cover next year’s taxes. Bah…
No culinary classes since the pastry class and nothing planned for the rest of this month. Too much work and too little free time. I’m hoping things quiet down in May and I can restart the classes.
Ain’t life great…. 
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One of my favorite food writers has a blog that I read regularly. One of contributing writers is an outspoken Chef named Anthony Bourdain. Tony is not a fan of the Food Network and he’s recently posted a review of the recent Food Network Awards that were broadcast on their network.
If you love the Food Network and don’t have a sense of humor, you probably should skip it, but it’s pure Tony and funny as h*ll… 
Off to work for another fun night of making pizza…
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It’s been another long 9 hour day in the restaurant today and an early morning start again tomorrow, but I’ve been making slow progress on the little gansey.
Finished the front, the two shoulder extensions and joined both shoulders yesterday afternoon. I’m going to *try* to pick up stitches for the first arm tomorrow, but it all depends on what I feel like and what else is happening. By the way… This shot is really close to true color of the yarn.
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It’s been a rough week at the restaurant. We’ve had two people quit and our night manager is expecting a baby around the first of May and she informed the owner yesterday that she needs to cut her hours drastically and she’ll probably be leaving completely within the next week or so. And the owner hasn’t been able to find anybody to hire. We are currently at minimums to run the place and only with most of us putting in nearly 40 hour work weeks.
But, there has been progress on the little gansey. Finished the back this morning and will start on the front later today. Don’t you think it’s cute… 
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It’s Easter and I should have been relaxing and working on the little sweater, but instead I headed into the Oregon Coast Range to search out a Steam Donkey.
I had got some information about the location of a couple of donkeys and though it’s been raining on and off the past couple of days, this morning was dry and so we headed for the hills. Once we had left the truck, the trip was completely off trail. We had a compass, a map and some general directions. By dumb luck we stumbled upon the abandoned logging railroad grade and started following it in the general direction given by our informant. Mostly the rain held off, with only a couple of showers, but we were swaddled in rain gear and stumbling through sword fern and crawling over numerous windfalls, but finally crossed a little stream and there stood a little vertical boiler for a donkey. If you look at the above link, you’ll get an idea the relationship of the boiler to the setup of the donkey.
This chunk of cast iron has probably been sitting here for 70 or 80 years. It’s actually a pretty small boiler and considering that we also found two boiler water tanks, we expected to find more. But no further luck today.
Physically worn out and starting to get pretty damp throughout, we headed back out to the truck and came home to dry out and get some dinner. Very pleasant day overall…
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A very productive day. A little knitting, a bit of grocery shopping, baked up a batch of Snickerdoodles and now I sit listening to Alan Jackson, sipping a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and munching on cookies. Sometimes life just goes your way… 
Almost 6″ into the body of the little sweater. Underarm gussets complete to the halfway point, so I’m through circular knitting on the body. I’ll start the back tomorrow, knitting it flat to the shoulder and repeat the front. Join the front and back at the shoulders, pick up stitches around arm hole and knit the arms with a little circular or two longer circulars.
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First around the yard. Lots of things starting to bloom, but these caught my eye.
An old fashioned flowering quince. You see a lot of these on older homesteads and the parents of these were probably planted soon after the house was finished in 1947.
And the flowers of Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) are another of our early bloomers.
And then into the woods above the house.
Western Trillium (Trillium ovatum) is one of the early indicators of spring.
And our pretty little Wood Violet seems to be everywhere on floor of the woods.
And finally, the elusive Calypso Orchid (Calypso bulbosa). We’ve got our own little plot of these native orchids and the patch seems to grow larger each year. This is one of the larger groups. Each little purple spot is an orchid.
And a closeup.
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A quick update this evening. It’s been a busy week at work, but I’ve made progress on the little gansey.
I picked up yarn on the way to work on Monday. I found a very soft, pink, baby alpaca that would knit up at the gauge I wanted.
Cast on on Tuesday and managed a bit more than 4 inches of the body as of this afternoon. I’m looking at a three day weekend to work on it, but I still need to get my taxes done, so it won’t all be fun…. 
It’s currently being worked on a little 16″ US#4 needle so it looks a little bit crunched. I’m going to put it on a couple circulars before I photograph it again.
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Just completed my first overtime week since I started with the restaurant. The owner took a couple of days off and I covered his normal weekday shift on Wednesday and Friday and opened and did morning kitchen prep on Saturday. Friday was extremely busy and I work a 9 1/2 hour shift that day and then on Saturday, one of the new counter people quit. Like.. Came in, looked at her schedule and quit. That meant the Saturday crew was going to be a person short for closing and Myssie, our evening manager, asked if I could stay a few hours to help out. A few hours.. I managed to work nearly 11 1/2 hours yesterday for a total of 43.3 hours for the week. Needless to say, this oldfart was very tired. The rest of this coming week will be easy in comparison with 4 closes, but I’ve got a three day weekend coming up (we are closed for Easter, one of the three days a year we are closed).
I’m heading out to my local yarn store tomorrow or Tuesday to pick out yarn for the little sweater. I’ll post progress reports as it goes along.
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