When Knitting Was a Manly Art

My Mother died at about 9:30 this morning.

She had a stroke Tuesday afternoon and after an early positive diagnosis, she went downhill very fast on Wednesday. I spent about 5 hours by her bedside on Wednesday and was on my way back to Salem this morning to visit her again when I received the call.

I was very close to my Mother and luckily I was able to spend a couple hours with her this past Thursday. Just the two us talking. I’m going to miss her. When things were bad, I could always count on her to make me feel better.

The past couple months have been tough, and this just adds to it. I feel lost right now. I’m not taking the blog down, but I don’t expect I’ll be posting again for some time.

Popularity: 7% [?]

see more crazy cat pics

Popularity: 19% [?]

moar funny pictures

Popularity: 19% [?]

It’s been a while since my last posting, but work and a slowly reviving nursery have left me with little time for much else.

Mentally, things are going pretty nice, but the restaurant has gotten crazy in the last two months. While I’m still cruising close to the 40 hour/week mark, I feel like I’m *always* working. I have a 10 hour shift every Monday, an 8 1/2 hour shift on Friday (which means closing on the busiest night of the week — sometimes that 8 1/2 hours expands to more like 9 1/2). And on top of that, Sunday is one of our only three closed days (Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter) and to keep my hours up, I worked a 6 straight days this week with 5 closes. Ah, but I did get a pay raise (making *nearly* $11/hour).

Nursery is starting to come alive and Eileen’s first plant sale is less than three weeks away and that means when I’m not cooking, I’m planting and cleaning up plants.

Still knitting a tiny bit, just so I can say I’m doing it. Nothing of interest to report.

Yesterday was my 61st birthday and I spent it working. I’m closing the restaurant tonight, but I’ve got the whole weekend off and I intend to sleep in late tomorrow and then see if I can find a good way to celebrate.

Don’t Mess With The Old Guy

An old prospector walks his tired old mule into a western town one day. He’d been out in the desert for about six months without a drop of whiskey. He walked up to the first saloon he came to and tied his old mule to the hitch rail. As he stood there brushing some of the dust from his face and clothes, a young gunslinger walked out of the saloon with a gun in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other. The young gunslinger looked at the old man and laughed, saying, “Hey old man, have you ever danced?” The old man looked up at the gunslinger and said, “No, I never did dance. I just never wanted to.” A crowd had gathered by then and the gunslinger said, “Well, you old fool, you’re gonna’ dance now,” and started shooting at the old man’s feet. The old prospector was hopping around and everybody was laughing.

When the gunslinger fired his last bullet, he holstered his gun and turned around to go back into the saloon. The old man reached up on the mule, drew his shotgun, and pulled both hammers back making a double clicking sound. The gunslinger heard the sound and everything got quiet. The crowd watched as the gunslinger slowly turned around looking down both barrels of the shotgun. The old man asked, “Did you ever kiss a mule square on the ass?” The gunslinger swallowed hard and said, “No. But I’ve always wanted to.”

The lessons from this story are:
1. Don’t waste ammunition.
2. Don’t mess with old guys.

Popularity: 23% [?]

It’s been a wild couple of weeks.

We’re down two heads at the restaurant, both due to firing. One of the counter ladies had some questionable activity on the till that she didn’t want to come in and discuss and one of our cooks was fired for being overpriced and a pain in the ass.

I went from a bit over 30 hours/week to nearly 39 hours this next week, including a 10 hour shift on Monday’s and to top it all off, there was a basketball tournament in town this weekend with 56 teams competing and *of course* the winning teams showed up tonight about an hour before closing. Sigh.. Shut the Open sign off at 9pm, clocked out at about 10:15. Sitting here with a cold bottle of beer trying to wind down, but I need to get to bed soon, as I need to be back at the restaurant at 9:30 tomorrow morning. Yes.. But my paycheck will be wonderful.

Still plugging away on the third scarf and I even did a couple rows on the little sweater to just prove to myself that I knew where I was in the pattern.

Hopefully, more later

Popularity: 39% [?]

This is since Monday night

Popularity: 40% [?]

For the 4th or 5th time since the first of December we woke to another dump of snow. About 7″ overnight and a bit still coming down. NOAA is predicting at least a couple more inches for us before this one is over.

And a quick picture of the little lace wash cloth I finished up. The pattern is called Dayflower. I knitted this lace pattern ages ago on my first circular lace shawl project from Shawls and Scarves (Best of Knitters)

Popularity: 44% [?]

Did you ever have a song stuck in your head? I listen to *a lot* of country music at work and the following lyrics have been stuck in my head for days.

Come on in boy, sit on down and tell me about yourself
So you like my daughter, do you now? Yeah, we think she’s somethin’ else
She’s her daddy’s girl, her momma’s world
She deserves respect, that’s what she’ll get
Now, ain’t it son?
Y’all run along and have some fun
I’ll see you when you get back, bet I’ll be up all night
Still cleanin’ this gun

It’s from Rodney Atkins’ latest album, If You’re Going Through Hell, and it’s a father-daughter tale.

Another knitted wash cloth finished. Pictures later this week and I expect to restart on the little sweater towards the end of the week.

Popularity: 45% [?]

Finished the second of three scarves for another of the young ladies at work.

This one is done in Lion Brand Yarn — Moonlight Mohair in the Northern Lights colorway.

This morning I put out a fresh block of suet and in less than an hour, our little local flock of Gray Jays discovered it. We had five jays standing in line to get their turn at the suet. Not a common bird at our elevation

Popularity: 46% [?]

Mostly a quiet week so far, though tonight was a very busy one at the restaurant. While we barely broke $1000 all day for the first part of the week, we managed a $1300 $1700 dinner tonight. What does that mean? It means the three of us in the kitchen were humping our little butts for a solid three hours, but the owner should be happy.

Finished a simple little scarf this afternoon and presented it to the young lady I work work with. She was pleased. It was mindless and the only thing that saved it from being painfully mindless was the fact that it required me to increase a stitch on one side and remember to decrease on the other. While it was basically garter stitch, the increasing and decreasing caused a bias in the fabric creating the points at the end and the slanting of the stitch pattern.

Unfortunately, the other two young ladies I worked with tonight asked “Where’s mine?”. I’ve got a couple more skeins and as easy as these things are to knit up, I may just do a couple more.

Popularity: 44% [?]