Another weekend ended

This has been a good weekend. Ralph did go to archery, and I spun about 1/4 of a bobbin's worth of yarn. Chatted with some folks who were curious, of course. One guy said it looked cool; I said it keeps me out of trouble. He asked where I got the fiber; I said that particular batch had come from Solvang. He said "you used to work for Ralphs, didn't you?" Turns out he was one of the old managers back from when I did indeed work for Ralphs (that's a So Cal grocery store for those among the Teeming Millions who may not be familiar with the place), which explains why he looked familiar. We talked a bit before he went on his way. I also chatted with a woman who was knitting a scarf for her daughter. The scarf is being knit from a fuzzy/fluffy yarn that is pink, blue, purple, and glittery. I will let you guess the age of the daughter, and I bet you get it right within a couple years :-)

Afterwards Ralph said he had talked to one of the instructors, who has an archery supply shop in Fullerton & found out that a good set of equipment for a beginner would cost about $200 or so. He wanted to go to the shop to look around. I asked if he had enough money to look around and he, being all Mr. Innocent, said we don't need money to look. I knew better--I knew if we went to the shop he'd want to buy stuff & said as much. He grinned & said he had enough, so off we went. I sat in the car & knit while he shopped (finished the orangutan's leg, hooray!). He bought a bow, some arrows, a quiver, and an arm protector. I did not ask him what he spent & he did not volunteer the amount, but I'm guessing it was more than $200 by the looks of the equipment.

Since we were in the area, we went to Rutabegorz for lunch. I haven't been there in years, and my goodness it has changed. Some of my favorite items are no longer on the menu (including their "rice-a-rutas" which was a mix of chicken, shrimp, and rice served with cheese bread & salsa), and they definitely have a new--and inferior--bread supplier. However, the vegetable cheese soup was as delicious as I remember it being, and Ralph loved his mushroom quesadilla & pumpkin soup. Mind you, he had ordered the chili, not the soup; when we pointed this out to the waiter, he looked dismayed, said the soup was on the house, and brought the chili as well. Needless to say Ralph was STUFFED by the time he waddled out of there.

Today was Ralph's D & D game, and while he & his friends played I was in the bedroom doing something that was very very very scary--at least, it was to me. I really did want my shawl to be longer than it is, so I picked out the cast-off edge (!!!!). And I was an idiot--I couldn't find the woven-in end, so I figured I'd just cut the last stitch & unravel it that way. Well duh, I discovered AFTER cutting the stitch that the reason I couldn't find the end was because it was on the other corner! So I had to unweave each of the 364 edge stitches rather than just plain ripping it out (a process that took several hours, interrupted by occasional bouts of reading to save my sanity), and now I have the other end of the cut stitch to tink back to remove the edge row & get back to the pattern. I also had to make an emergency run to the yarn shop in order to get a second size 9 circ, so that I had another needle with which to tink (all the other circs I have were either way too small, way too big, or had way too short a cable). I got there 15 minutes after they closed, but the clerks took pity on me & let me in anyway. No size 9s, but I did get an 8 with a 32" cable & that will do for the tinking.

Also stopped at the bookstore. Didn't buy much--an audiobook that was on sale for $6, and a couple puzzle magazines. The guy at the checkout ahead of me was buying a book called "Blogging for Dummies" and all I could think was, "What's so hard about blogging that you need to buy a book to learn how?" He was also asking about the shop's return policy, verifying more than once that he would get his money back, not just an exchange, which leads me to think he's going to use the book just enough to get his blog started & then bring it back to the shop. Guess he's never heard of a library.

Of course, that got me thinking about my blog. I know that Sis & The Boy and a couple other people read it, and I've also had comments posted by people that I *don't* know which got me to wondering just how many people read my blog, even if it's only a one-time thing when they go through the "next blog" random viewings. I thought about asking everyone who reads this particular post to comment on it, even if it's just to say "yup, I read this," just to get an idea of the number, but decided that seemed like I was being vain. Guess I'll just have to keep wondering :-)