kmkat and her kneedles

Why I am not an entrepeneur.

I knitted some stuff for the library Friends' booth at a recent craft fair.

 

None of them sold. Nada. Zip. Zero.

The objects on the right hold purse-size packets of tissues. I made one for myself last winter from some leftover sock yarn.

I still think they are all cute, especially the korknisse done in Green Bay Packer colors.

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ETA: Y'all can Google for for Korknisse pattern if you want to make some. For the tissue holder *recipe* , find them in the 2007 FOs (link in the sidebar).

Sometimes it just falls into your lap.

Blog fodder, that is.

Saturday night my friend Colleen and I went to the fund raising kick-off for a local library's new facility. Yes, we went to another fund raising kickoff a couple weeks ago. New library buildings are apparently the latest thing in Polk County...*

This one was quite different from the pot luck/silent auction in the fire hall that we went to then. This one was a costume ball held in a faux French chateau.

Chateau St. Croix is that rarest of creatures, a Wisconsin winery. (Their website is not working as I type this. I hope it is up again by the time y'all read.) Before you scoff at vino from [V]isconsin, however, let me assure you that their wine is not at all bad. I ordered a glass of the house wine at a local establishment about a year ago and commented that it was quite yummy. Turned out it was from Chateau St. Croix and surprisingly good. I'm no wine snob -- $10/bottle is my absolute top price -- but this stuff was nice. Anyway...

Here are more images of the place, shamelessly lifted from other websites:

 

You all know how difficult it is to take indoor night photos without a flash, right? Blurry images, funky color? What follows is a textbook example of what happens when Your Faithful Writer ignores those issues and goes right ahead and takes flashless photos. After consuming a glass or two of [surprisingly tasty] local Merlot.

My date** Colleen -- in her Goodwill ball gown and 50¢ feather mask from The Dollar Store -- and her exoskeleton-ed friend:

Sometimes I got the traditional head shot:

And sometimes I got a more interesting one:

Whereas many of the women went for the fairy tale princess/femme fatale look (see above), some of the men seemed to go in another direction entirely:

I met the mayor:

and The Scarecrow and the Wicked Witch of the West (IRL, his daughter):

A crayon and her coloring book (sadly, I was never able to get a photo of them together so as to capture her entire Crayola costume; she is a member of the library board and every time I grabbed her to pose she dashed off for a newspaper photo or an interview with Katie Couric or something):

It seems that a surprising number of people have great masks tucked away, just waiting for the opportunity to shine:

I'm so glad I had the opportunity to chat with that Elizabethan-esque couple (and to use the flash). Take a closer look at their masks (click to embiggen):

Those are acorn husks and milkweed pods and burrs and chicken feathers and, I think, bark or dried leaves. She said her kids like to collect stuff. When it came time to decorate the masks, she'd say, Go get me a chicken feather, and presto! there it was. Amazing.

At some point during the evening we noticed that we had been joined by a busload of women all dressed in black and white and many wearing name tags that said "Bachelorette #[n]". After chatting with the priest, below:

we got the story. Every year her daughter hosts a party for all the deer-hunting widows in her acquaintance. This year the theme of the party was black and white. They had apparently planned to come to the chateau as part of their festivities and so they came, to heck with crashing a semi-private/semi-public affair. They were so cool. Good Nun posed for me with Wicked Witch***:

And the mystery of the nametags was explained.

Deer-hunting widows. Get it?

I fully intended to have someone take a picture of me but I totally forgot. I wore the Shrek horns from last summer, a whitish thermal underwear shirt, a very loose belt, a too-small brown vest, short green pants, and boots. Hello, I'm Shrek.

The crayon lady and I are seemingly the only library supporters who do not envision ourselves as Cinderella.

* Until about five years ago, the newest library building in the county was  1970s vintage; the other nine were all housed in far older structures. Then one village renovated an old theater in an astounding display of excellent design enabled by professional fund raising, and now three or four other libraries are either fund raising for a new facility or have already finished their move. Yay for libraries! and for library supporters!

** No, Colleen and I are not planning to elope. I'm her *date* whenever a function arises on a weekend that Smokey works. Thanks, Smoke, for working so hard so that I can do this stuff. (And you can thank me for not trying to drag you along :)

*** I commented to Wicked Witch that I had never seen her in makeup before, but that the *painted strumpet* look suited her. She related how she had had to keep throwing her (four!) kids out of her bedroom earlier in the evening because she planned to go as A Woman Who Actually Had Time To Get Ready.

Outlaw chocolate! Crazy Aunt Purl!

Outlaw chocolate.

* * * * *

Crazy Aunt Purl is coming to Barnes & Noble at the Mall of America on Thursday evening. I shall be there, knitting and library copy* of her book in hand. Yeah, I'm gonna have her sign the library's copy -- hey, it's not like I'm gonna deface the book, ya know? I'll be adding to its value.

So far I know that Dale-Harriet in WI and Cursing Mama will be there, too. I've never met either of them but I'm planning/hoping to. Anybody else planning to go? If so, look for me, overexposed and smirking, or underexposed and grainy:

Perhaps I'll wear that scarf, just to be recognizable...

* I'm a trustee of the regional library board, treasurer of the county Friends group, and an occasional librarian. In my own mind, at least, that gives me permission :-)

Adventures.

Smokey and I visited the tribe for dinner this week. St. Croix Casino has a seafood buffet on Thursday nights. Since our anniversary was Friday (33 years! yikes!) we declared this to be our celebratory outing. Cameras are forbidden in the casino and I didn't want to risk getting yelled at, so I didn't try to photograph our dinner. Picture my plate with salmon, peel-and-eat shrimp, deep-fried shrimp, homemade scalloped potatoes, and prime rib. Picture Smokey's plate piled high with crab legs.

We had a 45-minute wait to get into the buffet. I hate to gamble. Smokey likes to play the slots but had decided not to do so this time. After sitting around for a few minutes, though, he was bored. Not me, I had brought my knitting. Of course. And then he realized we were sitting in front of a row of nickel slots. I gave him a dollar, which he had turned into five by the time our number was called for dinner (he's lucky that way). Took care of the waiter's tip :)

I did manage to capture a couple highlights in the parking lot.

We stole the land from them, they can certainly park anywhere they want. I just like the reminder that I don't live in a city anymore.

This was rather... unsettling:

That is a row of eight handicapped spaces. There were at least four rows like this. That is a lot of handicapped parking, people! Gambling is apparently popular among the elder set. Not that we are members of that set, Smokey's handicapped parking pass notwithstanding.

* * * * *

Last night my friend Colleen and I went to a fund raiser dinner and auction for the new library and museum in Luck, the next little town north. Here is what they are planning to build:

It will be by far the most attractive building in the village.

The festivities were held in the fire hall.

The local ladies served up roast pork sandwiches, cole slaw, hamburger/rice hot dish (Midwestern for casserole), squash, and a multitude of homemade desserts.

The serving ladies were friendly and generous and photogenic, but what I really should have gotten a photo of was the array of desserts. I hadn't seen that many home baked cakes and cookies and bars (correct pronunciation: barss) since I don't know when. Maybe when we used to go to the monthly fish fry at the VFW down the road from our house.

In addition to the usual donated kinds of stuff -- gift certificates, home decor items, sporting equipment -- there were some actual antiques  that had been donated. A treadle Singer, complete with tattered pages from the original manual:

and a wooden trunk in very good condition. (You can see more of the Singer in the background):

An oak rocker in excellent condition that was very comfortable. Colleen pronounced it Just Right for petite people like herself.

Anyone ever have one of these?

   

Not everything was an antique, however. What's that?

This is Packer Country. Vicki, this shot is for you. You may have gotten to go to Rhinebeck, but we have a signed jersey here.

County fair.

I went to the county fair today.

The weather was perfect.

My shift starts at 10. Better hurry. Hmmm. Looks like I need to reset the date.

Not many people here yet.

Our booth was in the Horticulture Building. Of course. Where else?

Outside the building was an impromptu Lost & Found.

Our booth was between AA and a lady selling Tupperware.

Prices are dropping.

I took enough pictures to keep this blog going all week. Y'all are gonna get to see everything I saw. You excited yet? I am.

I do knit. Really.

Yes, folks, I have been knitting.

I have been making stuff to sell at the Friends of the Polk County Libraries booth at the county fair, which starts on Thursday. The Friends are raising money to buy an LCD projector to be shared by the ten municipal libraries.

These are facecloths, $5 each. Any that don't sell, plus any more that I make between now and September, will go to Rabbitch's project (scroll down to the July 8 entry to read about it). Many thanks to Ann for the heart pattern -- isn't it sweet? I wish I had time to knit a bunch more of these. I know they would sell.

Remember all this?

   

I got at least one ball of every color that *my* Wal*Mart doesn't sell. That's a lot, people.

I made some warshcloths*. $5 each.

 

I made some bibs. $8 each. Actually, these are less work than the warshcloths, but I figured people would pay more for a cute bib than a cute warshcloth.

Many thanks to Ann 'n' Kay for giving me their blessing to make a nonprofit *profit* using their patterns.

We are selling other stuff, too.

Felted mittens, $10, and kits, $7, to make more felted mittens.

Library t-shirts and aprons and baby onesies.

We planned to make many more of these purses -- Goodwill sweaters, felted, cut up, lined, with felted I-cord handles -- but they turned out to take more time than we expected. We have another sale in November; by then we will have more purses ($25 and up). These two are pretty plain. We got fancier as we went. Too bad the fancy ones only got cut out, not sewn. (Guess who was in charge of the sewing? Given the choice I would rather knit than sew, plus there is nowhere to plug in the machine in the car.)

Library tote bags. Aprons, long and short. All emblazoned with "Check it out @ your library." Notecards, too.

Of course we are selling books as well, but they are a LOT of work to pack up and transport and set up and pack up afterwards and bring back. Every year we take fewer of them.

 

Hooray for the fair! and hooray for knitters!

* Warshcloth knitters may notice that the slipped stitches on a couple of these are lined up in columns rather than offset as the pattern puts them. I had been making them that way for months before I noticed that my warshcloths were... different than everyone else's. Clearly pattern-reading is not my strongest suit.

Stuff, random.

Y'know the sci-fi plot about the person who wakes up one day to discover that about a gazillion years have passed since s/he went to sleep? I had a moment like that on Friday when I opened Bloglines. I had something upwards of 500 unread posts. WTF? After I worked up the courage to start clicking on some of them I found that Bloglines had decided to  pick up random numbers of posts dating back to January. Whew. I'm still working my way through. Down to 95 81 83 at this moment.

* * * * *

My favorite part of the parade yesterday was when an alert parent would spot me in my Shrek getup, nudge the 3-yo kidlet in front of her (it was almost always a mom doing the nudging; I guess the dads were more interested in the beer), and say, "Look, honey! It's Shrek!" And the kidlet would look and his or her little eyes would get big as saucers. Sweet.

Although I soon discovered that I should only go about one step toward the kidlet to wave. Any closer and said kidlet would be overcome with terror at the weird smiling lady in the box who was clearly intent on eating him/her.

* * * * *

 

We had a bit of fun making the books, too.

* * * * *

I took advantage of KnitPick's 40% off all books sale. Three books came to live at my house.

I don't knit lace. I have to intention to knit lace. Why I bought two books on lace knitting is beyond me. Clearly something is at work. Although I have to say that Victorian Lace Today is chock full of patterns, as many as one would normally find in two or three books.

"I don't understand why you did it, either."

* * * * *

Back when I was a sophomore in college in the late 60s (yeah, I'm older than dirt) I discovered Leonard Cohen. Had one album of his and played it to death. Then I got into harder rock and sort of forgot about him. When Closing Time hit the charts circa 1992 I smiled in remembrance but that was all. Ditto Hallelujah.

And then I found this on Scalzi's blog*.

Next thing I knew I was in iTunes downloading The Essential Leonard Cohen, apparently the equivalent of a 2-CD set. I've been listening to it constantly ever since because:

1. I have always been a sucker for a gravelly bass voice. I also happen to love the singing of Leo "Goose Farts on a Foggy Day" Kottke.
2. Cohen's lyrics are so wonderfully poetic  and obscure...
3. ...that the occasional [satirically?] trite song totally cracks me up. Ain't No Cure for Love starts out with a sax riff that would have been happy in 1962, although the 1962 version probably would not have contained the line, "I need to see you naked / In your body and your thoughts."

This YouTube of LC singing Hallelujah is pretty good, too, if you ignore the fact that he looks like a half-dead cross between Jeff Goldblum and Dustin Hoffman. And how the chorus can't quite manage to keep hidden behind the set.

* * * * *

Time to change the litter box.

* * * * *

Also time to shut down the 'puter. It's all fire and brimstone outside, dark as 4 pm on a November afternoon, except for all the, like, green. Thunderstorms a'comin'...

TTFN!

* Erika led me there a while back.

What?

Huh?

Weird.

What are those things?

Green mushrooms?

Here's a big hint.

Oh, another parade!

 

I walked in two (!) parades today. (You'd think the people who run these small town festivals would talk to each other. Wannigan Days in St. Croix Falls (above) and Lucky Days in Luck are both this weekend; at least the parades weren't at the same time.) We had a great time!

ETA: I didn't get any good photos of the first parade, in Luck, but my friend Jeff did. Click here and scroll down to the third photo in the right-hand column.

There is a library in Michigan that needs your help.

If you're a registered voter in Lapeer, Michigan (or know someone who is), the libraries there can use your help. Rennie explains it all here, and here's some direct information.

Quoting from Rennie's post: Do you know somebody who knows somebody....?  Let's put our six degrees of separation to work, and convince all of Lapeer's voters that this needs to happen. Spread the word...votes for libraries... tell all your friends... have them tell all their friends....

Say YES to libraries

"Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries."
--Anne Herbert, The Whole Earth Catalog