Ryan mentioned in the comments on her post that the gold yarn was the least popular at the giveaway. I think that’s a shame. The gold yarn is quite companionable, albeit in a quiet, understated, homebody sort of way.

The yarn – I have taken to calling this skein Gold Leader – enjoys nothing as much as kicking back on the couch with a cat and a good knitting book. The cat likes it, too – note how his left paw is clutching Gold Leader firmly. Maybe it’s because they’re almost the same color; Kimble probably thinks it’s his mother.

“Mommy?”

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Some back story on this anecdote: I have only one set of size 0 DPNS. I happened to be working on a part of the Skunkworks Sock which requires all five needles – one could theoretically try and use four, but not if one was completely exhausted and strung out at the time, you know?

I board the bus for Everett, and take the seat directly behind the rear door. A guy in his early 20s wearing some kind of sports team’s shirt takes the seat beside me, plugs in his ipod, and proceeds to start text messaging his friends. Cool, cool.

So I’m knitting along, when suddenly one of the DPNs goes zzzzip and falls out of the stitches. (They do love to do that, don’t they?) I peer down between my feet in vain, for I had heard at least three or four clatters, which meant that it went far, far away. No needle. I stare at the knitting. I think, I’m going to start crying, right here on this bus, just because I’m so fricken’ tired, and everyone’s going to think I’m a nut. Not knowing what else to do, I use the free needle to pick up the loose stitches. Then I stare at the knitting some more.

After a few minutes, the guy sitting next to me unplugs his ear buds and asks, “Did you need that?”

I mumble something meaningless and stuff the sock into my bag. He smiles, gets up from his seat, and peers over the little wall, down into the narrow stairwell, which leads to the rear door of the bus, and which – yes, there it is – the little DPN has fallen into the crack between the stair and the door.

You may not know this about bus doors, but they are designed to open if you push on them hard enough. This is probably some sort of safety feature. But if, for example, you were to attempt to reach head-first down the stairwell and try to fetch a teeny weeny needle before it fell out the door (which is rattling ever so slightly with the breeze) and the bus hit a bump, and you tipped forward (being a full-grown male of the species) and fell against the door? While the bus was moving at 65MPH down the interstate? Not such a safety feature.

I watched, a little bit frozen with terror, as this complete stranger carefully reached down there, plucked the needle from certain doom, and handed it back to me. I was all like “YOU’RE MY HERO!” and maybe I said this a little bit too loudly, because everyone on the bus stiffened up in that Crazy Lady Alert! sort of way, but I did not care.

Thanks to Guy In Sports Shirt, I was able to keep knitting on the ride back to Everett, and did I keep a firm grip on all five DPNs at all times? Oh my, yes.

Saturday I had to make a run back to Seattle for the final cleaning/key hand-off at the old apartment. It coincided nicely with Ryan’s Dulaan yarn giveaway so I stopped in there first. So much yarn! For free! As much as you want! (Here, have a few more.) Meeting Ryan, TMK, and Frankie was a blast – and yes, Frankie is every bit as cute as her pictures would lead you to believe.

Ryan and TMK were both super nice, and Ryan even brought kleenex when we were watching The Movie and I started freaking out about sitting in a stranger’s living room weeping – people, The Movie is really sad. Fast forward to the happy part where the little kids get their knitwear, then pick up your needles and knit like crazy. Trust me.

Here you can see what Ryan’s up against. These are two of the mega-skeins. Each of them weighs, oh, about 10 pounds. I propped them up on the built-in porch bench with a roll of packing tape, for perspective. They’re about the size of an eight year-old child. They’re so large that you can’t help but giggle when you see them.

As you can see, I took some of the much-maligned gold yarn. I like the gold yarn! Particularly when paired with the darker-than-red-but-lighter-than-maroon yarn. Doesn’t it look just like the Dulaan logo?

These are some of the “normal” skeins. Don’t they all go nicely together? Well, you can’t really see the dark color very well in the picture – it’s a brown so dark, it’s almost black. Call the color Special Dark. I’m crazy about this color!

A close-up picture of the Special Dark in the sunlight.

These mega-skeins are a real storage issue. (And I only have two! Think of Ryan’s garage!) I cleared out a big sweater tub, thinking that it would be plenty of room for the Dulaan yarn. Here’s what the yarn thought of this plan.

That’s two mega-skeins in the tub, with three or four normal skeins kind of tucked into the cracks, plus a garbage bag of normal skeins on top. I did finally get the tub’s lid closed, by virtue of leaning on it with all my weight to snap the ends closed. Then I had to weight down the middle, because the yarn bowed the lid up. And cram a few dozen normal skeins here and there in some other knitting tubs. Holy crap, that’s a lot of yarn.

_Random Pictures_

The “driveway”

Secret Sock waiting for the bus at 4th and Union, downtown Seattle

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I have always maintained that in most endeavors – painting, drawing, knitting, cooking – there are just a few simple tools that you need. Everything else is just diminishing returns.

In the case of gardening, 92% of my needs can be met with:

1. A pair of working gloves.

2. Something that cuts (pruning shears)

3. Something that digs (trowel)

Also pictured, an apple from the tree that’s ripe right now. Man, those things are good. They’re kind of like cameo apples – sweet, a little tart, crunchy, and juicy. In other words, perfect. If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, and if the effect is cumulative, then I’m not going to have to see a doctor until some time in 2007. (Unless I need to go sooner for, like, apple poisoning.) I have since learned that they are Gravenstein apples. They are so good!!!

Using just these tools, and a lot of sweating, I cleared two patches this week. Here’s the second area I cleared – I know it looks sort of piddly, but this took two hours of hard labor, and resulted in an entire wheelbarrow full of weeds. One rose bush cleared, mulched, and watered: check!

A word on the weeds: they are many, and strong. Before I moved, I picked up a book on local weed identification and it has come in very handy. Here’s a fellow that’s exceeded the author’s expectations – according to the book, hairy willow-herb (pfft, just a class C) grows “up to three feet high, in ideal conditions.” This baby is over six feet tall. (I’m only 5’4 so it’s hard for me to judge, but it’s as high as I can reach without lifting my heels off the ground.)

I set the folding metal chair beside it for scale, but it’s a little hard to pick out against the background. (Added some orange lines… they don’t really help, though…) Impressive, no?

One giant weed: check!

But enough of the bad, bad weeds. One rose bush, not yet cleared, but still flowering its little heart out: check!

One rose bush, also flowering its little heart out, lit by the setting sun: check!

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“What the **** have you gotten us into this time?”

Tuesday I cleaned up the living area and washed the floors with Murphy’s Oil Soap – lemony fresh!

And unpacked my books into the built-in bookshelves – handy!

And cast on for the super-secret sock project I’m working on – I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you.

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(Okay, I’m cheating, this is from last Saturday. So sue me!)

On Thursday night, I stopped by the La Conner post office to pick up my mail. Just as I was turning the corner, something grabbed my attention. I stopped in the middle of the intersection, then backed up to get a better look (you can do that kind of thing in downtown La Conner at 10:30 on a Thursday night – there’s no one around for blocks). It was YARN!!! (I had to look twice, because at first I thought it might have been shelves selling sweaters – I’ve been fooled by shelves of sweaters before.)

Yarn ahoy!!! I was going to link to the yarn store, but apparently they don’t have a website. (What is it with stuff in La Conner not having websites? The newspaper doesn’t have one, either, which is why I thought there was no newspaper. [It's published weekly.])

Here’s the thing, folks: every business needs a website. It does. It really, really does. The smaller your business, the more you need one, trust me on this. Just a one-page site with your phone number, hours, and directions will do the trick.

Peevishness over lack of website aside, it looks like a pretty sweet place. TOO BAD I CANNOT BUY YARN UNTIL OCTOBER 1ST OR I RUN OUT OF YARN, whichever comes first. I’m halfway there! Haven’t bought yarn since the end of July! I can totally do this!

Anyway, I was feeling like a sock might be a little too challenging for the morning commute, so I grabbed some Sugar’N Creme yarn on my way out the door. I knew I would finish the dishcloth before the end of the day, so of course I had to leave the two skeins of sock yarn and partly-completed sock in my bag, too. Then I opened the fridge (which is AWESOME!) and took out the sandwiches I made the night before.

Problem: Not all of these items would fit into my bag. Not even if I squashed the sandwiches into the corner of the bag (I tried).

Possible solutions:

1. Climb the ladder, fetch backpack from sleeping area, dump everything in backpack onto the floor, climb back down the ladder, transfer contents of Metro bag into backpack. (Glancing at the clock, I ruled this out.)

2. Leave the two skeins of sock yarn and partially-completed sock behind. (But then I’d run out of knitting halfway to Everett, and have nothing to do!)

3. Leave the two skeins of cotton yarn behind. (But I don’t want to knit a sock this morning, I’m too tired and clumsy. I want to knit a dishcloth.)

4. Leave the sandwiches behind.

Naturally, I left the sandwiches.

I call this one Barn Door. It’s red and white, although you can’t really tell that from the picture. Funny, but 6:17AM appears not to be the best time to take pictures of knitting, daylight-wise.

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