Maiden Voyage

 I had my maiden voyage with the craft show tent this past weekend.

I was a vendor at Buckland Flowers and Produce's Fall Family Jam and got to use the tent for the very first time.  I was weirdly calm leading up to it.  I wasn't the least bit stressed or concerned about having enough inventory or if the weather would cooperate, or if I could fit all the stuff into the car, or if I'd make enough sales to make it worth while.....  I had none of the pre-show jitters that I normally get. It was weird.  Don't get me wrong, it was nice not going into panic mode.  Nice, but weird.

Of course I ended up forgetting to take several things with me but it all worked out in the end.  The guests were none the wiser, it was a beautiful day and sales were good.  

The event was really nice and I hope to get invited back in the future.  There was a band, well, really just a guy singing I think.  I couldn't see the stage from my booth but I could hear him singing.  It was the perfect level of background music.  Loud enough that I could whisper-sing along with him, but not so loud as to make it hard to have conversations with the shoppers.  There was a dunk tank where you could dunk the sheriff or a firefighter, there was, of course food and other vendors, and somebody must have pulled some strings because a medevac helicopter flew in and landed in the adjacent field for the kids (and grown-ups) to tour.  Pretty cool!

All in all, it was a really nice day and my tent went up and then down with no problems, my sandbag weights worked just fine (I was worried about them being heavy enough) and the tent never attempted to blow away, even with the helicopter wind.  Success!! I feel like a 'real' vendor now.  😊

I did have a little trouble the day before the show though.  The whale sweater I was knitting for Sarah for Christmas.... Well, something went horribly, horribly wrong.  And I don't even know what happened or where the problem is.  I have looked and relooked at the pattern a zillion times.  I started with the correct number of stitches.  I had the correct number of stitches before I started the yoke's colorwork.  The colorwork worked perfectly so I know I didn't have mistakes in my increases there.  But after the colorwork, when I went to put the sleeves on the holders, I discovered I'm missing more than 115 stitches.  For the life of me, I can't see where I went wrong so I plan to take it to the knitting shop and see if they can figure it out.  I don't want to frog it and start over if it's a pattern issue.  I was unbelievably mad and frustrated at first but the more I think about being 115+ stitches off, it's just sort of funny.  Frustrating, but funny.

Another frustrating thing is, I've got a nice case of poison ivy.  It's driving me INSANE.  Rather than itching, it feels more like someone is jabbing a lit cigarette into my skin.  It's mainly across the top of my foot, and on, between and under a few of my toes.  I'm not handling it well and I'm pretty dang cranky.  The good side of it is, they sent me home from work for having 'open sores' (a big no-no at the grocery store) so I've had two extra days to spend knitting and preparing for the next show this week.

It's also been raining almost constantly for the last several days.  I'm not complaining about that.  We needed the rain and it just makes me want to stay home and knit.  No complaints about that!

Happy knitting!

When Hats Scare Me

First, thank you all for the well wishes.  I'm still coughing like crazy but I've returned to work and am feeling much better.  

So, about the knitting...

Do you believe in ghosts?  Honestly, I'm not 100% sure how I feel about it/them but I do believe that our spirit leaves our body when we pass and that sometimes that spirit is strong enough to come back and visit occasionally.

Anyway, our house is over 100 years old.  It sits on land well-traveled by both sides during the Civil War.  American Revolution too, for that matter.  There's no record of anyone dying in the house but...  We joke that the house is haunted.  Doors slam shut or fly open by themselves.  Someone in one room will hear loud, angry banging on their bedroom door while the person in the next room hears nothing.  Dark shadowed and bright light human-ish shapes have been recorded on Hayden's baby monitor.  Megan, Hayden's mom, even once told the light shape that it was scaring her and asked it to leave.  The shape turned it's head toward the monitor/speaker, then walked through the door and to my knowledge, hasn't been seen again.  I've stepped out of the shower to find all the bathroom drawers standing open.  I've also seen shadow shapes flying around in my room at night. So yeah, we feel the house is haunted.  But Hayden is the only one who's felt real fear, or at least felt threatened.  (There was a month or two where she refused to go into the dining room because the 'spit monster' was in there.)

So, what does this have to do with knitting?

I'm knitting a hat using glow in the dark yarn.  That's a photo of it glowing in my dark closet, with no flash or any other light source, just the glowing yarn.  Pretty cool, right??

I left the hat on my desk near the window yesterday while I was at work and the yarn must have "charged" because I woke up in the middle of the night to find it glowing at me.  Scared me half to death for a minute until I realized what it was.

Anyway, I'm amazed at this yarn's ability to glow.  It's Lion Brand's DIY Glow.  My idea is to knit hats (and maybe dog sweaters in the future) that glow in the dark to help nighttime runners and dog walkers stay more visible in the dark.  In the sunlight, it just looks like a design knit with white yarn.

So, if you want to scare yourself silly in the middle of the night, get some DIY Glow and start knitting!

Bronchitis

I don't have much to report.  I've been busy knitting but since I'm craft show knitting, which means knitting the same thing over and over and over again.... There isn't much to talk about.

I knit a bunch of baby hats.  For some reason, my computer isn't allowing me to make any adjustments to the photo so...

Apa (it was supposed to be Grandpa but it came out Apa so...) and I took Hayden to Wendy's for lunch last week.  Hayden had the sniffles and it was THE dirtiest, nastiest Wendy's I've ever seen and between the two, I'm assuming, I caught a mean case of bronchitis.  If I ever stop coughing, I expect to have six twelve-pack abs.

I spent most of this week sitting napping on the deck.  I didn't test but I wonder if I had a touch of covid as well as the bronchitis.  I had the covid-like narcolepsy and there was one day where I really thought I should go to the ER because I just could not catch my breath.  Anyway, I spent most the week lounging on the deck watching the train go by.  Y'all thought I was making it up about living on the the edge of the tracks, didn't you?

To help me feel better, Sarah made me homemade tomato soup made with fresh veggies from the garden.  I was a little leery.  How could it be better than Campbell's?  I don't know, but it was!  It was Delicious! Her grilled cheeses are better than mine too. I'm a little jealous.

The soup must have worked because I'm starting to feel better and even began craft show knitting again. Thank goodness for September's cooler temperatures and lower humidity.  I was even able to sit outside and knit faux fur headbands today.  

Actually, over the last 2 days, I've also started three new, non craft show projects.  First, I started a Christmas tree skirt, because naturally that's what you do when you are sick to death of knitting craft show stuff and you have Fall Fever.  About an hour later, I started a Halloween granny square tote bag because, well, you know, Christmas is a long way off.  And then and hour after that, the mailman stopped by and brought the yarn that wasn't supposed to arrive until next week so of course I had to immediately cast on a secret sweater for Sarah.  I'm pretty sure Sarah doesn't read the blog so I'm not too worried about mentioning it here.  Besides, as excited as I am with my progress, I haven't taken any photos.

Hope you are staying healthy and happy knitting!