If one lived in a small city with a population of 45,000, how big would the city council be? Five? Seven? Eleven? Probably somewhere in that range.
I live in a rural county with a population of 45,000, and our county board comprises 23 -- that's 23, folks! -- supervisors. At times the monthly county board meetings have been like a one-ring circus. Several years ago the county attorney had to investigate whether to press assault charges against one board member who had [allegedly] attacked another during the meeting. In front of the public. And the press. Duh. A few months ago five supervisors walked out during the public comment portion of the meeting because the member of the public who got up to speak, a former board member, had threatened them before the meeting.
If I lived in Tony Soprano's New Jersey or the Medellin's Colombia or even Iraq, this might be par for the course, but this is Scandinavian Wisconsin we're talking about. Scandinavians, the ones who stare at their shoes when talking to you and think a quarter-teaspoon of black pepper in the hot dish constitutes spicy food, are generally low-key in everything, including politics.
On the plus side, there is nary a whiff of corruption in the government. Perhaps a bit of old-boyism and nepotism, but that's hard to avoid when the population is so sparse and so few of them want to participate in public service. Every so often some public official is discovered to have used public employees to plow their driveway, but the dollar amounts are small and the underlying cause stupidity rather than cupidity.
County board meetings, however, can be dull. Tonight's was no exception, although the part where the finance director, the treasurer, the chairman of the finance committee, and the corporate [county] counsel were debating the wording and meaning of the proposed resolution on county investment policy -- are the repurchase agreements collateralized? is putting up to 75% of excess county funds into bank CDs sufficiently diversified? exactly how much of the deposits in local banks stay in the county vs. being invested elsewhere? -- had me riveted in my seat even as the rest of the eyelids in the rooms seemed to have become v-e-r-y heavy. (Remember that I am a CPA and have a lot of experience in the world of finance. Riveting to me = dull to others.)
Anyway. I was sitting between two other knitters and we were all busily knitting/tinking/whatever. I cast on for a pair of fingerless gloves (Fetching, of course) and got to the end of the cable section when I discovered that, despite the fact that I had carefully measured my hand, swatched, measured my gauge, washed the swatch, remeasured, did the math, and cast on the precise number of stitches required, it was too small. Bleah.
So here it is again, being reknit. There's the lying little swatch, too.
It is not all bad, though. I''ve been fantasing lately about knitting with wooly yarn. It's the result of knitting the double-knit scarf of EL Silky Wool. The SW is a nice yarn, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't have any loft or elasticity to speak of so it doesn't offer the tactile pleasure of worsted. My habit for the last year or so when I go to bed is to let my thoughts drift to yarn and knitting and patterns and colors while I wait for sleep, and I noticed that the last few nights all I could think about was having the feel of nice wool yarn between my fingers. So even frogging this was a pleasure. The yarn is the Auracania Alpaca I got from my Knitters' Coffee Swap buddy Susan. I waited for it to speak to me and when the weather got cold on Saturday, it did. You need fingerless gloves. Your hands are cold on the keyboard. Alpaca would feel so good. Fingerless glo-o-o-o-o-ves...
See the purple skein behind the alpaca? I'm still waiting for that to speak. I know it will. It's just a matter of time. And listening.
