From the Depths of My Creative Madness: This Ain't No Love Story

Warning, this is going to be a long post.

Start of the Widdershins

I cast on for Widdershins. I wanted to get the initial toe increases out of the way. I was able to do one cable Friday night and then I packed it up. I did forget to pack the dpn I was using as a cable needle but thankfully, I had tried cabling without a cable needle in the past so I was okay. By the time I got to Boston, the sock looked like this:

Boston, the memories

I got myself up to Boston this weekend. It's amazing the stuff one remembers. I took the airport shuttle from terminal B to the T station and we drove past terminal C and terminal E. Last time I was at terminal C was on 9/11/2001 in the madness of the groundings post World Trade Center hits. Last time I was at terminal E, was the summer of 2001 on my month long jaunts in Europe and Asia. From the airport, I took myself to the North End so that I could get cake. The winds were bitterly cold. It was the Boston that I remembered. After a quick lunch and some cake, I got myself to the redline and headed for Porter Square. Again the memories came back. Alewife, the end redline station I used to park at for my jaunts into Boston. Kendall, where there was a thrift store with lots of old clothes from the last 20 or so years. I don't remember what it's called, but if I got out at Kendall, I could walk myself to it. I had bought a blue velvet dress there in high school. I think it was handmade since the seams looked like something I would do if I had made it. Next stop, yarn crawl.

Mind's Eye Yarns

I hadn't originally planned on coming to Mind's Eye Yarns. Upon a recommendation in my comments, and checking out the website and seeing fiber, I decided to go. I did have 3-4 hours to kill. It's located in a cute little house in Porter Square and was literally right off the T stop. Lucy, the owner wasn't there, but I did meet some other very friendly people. I tossed my stuff in the backroom and began my explorations. First I saw a wall of fiber for spinning. OOOOOO.

Then, I was shown some of the yarns in the shop including some of Lucy's own hand dyed sock yarn. I bought 2 colors, 2 skeins each to I could make knee highs if I wanted to. It's a superwash wool/ tencel blend.

I sat and knitted with some of the friendly people there. At one point, I looked up and said, "Oh My God!" because I saw:

A Great Wheel!

I got up after a while and wandered the shop again and came across:

The funny thing is that almost a month ago, I had actually bought something similar at Springwater:

I had started spinning up this ball and realized that not only would this make a great laceweight for knitting up Cherry Blossom Shawl. Then, as I plied it, I thought it'd make a great sweater. But I only had just under a pound of this fiber! What to do? What to do? Well, there was 8 ounces of this stuff at Mind's Eye Yarns so it all came home with me. After doing enough damage there, it was time to head on over to Harvard Square to check out Woolcott and Co and then an early dinner and THE GAME. Woolcott was okay.

Harvard Sucks

As usual, pregaming was at John Harvards where anyone who could make it ended up. Then the walk over the Charles, which for once was actually warm. Then it was on to the game:

Well, we lost. It hurts to lose, but it hurts A LOT to lose to Harvard. And their student fans suck. But then, we can't score on the Power Play. Our defense is shaky. Goaltending is questionable at times. It was the last game of the regular season and in the end, we finished 4th and they finished 8th in a league of 12. But wouldn't it be funny, to the annoyance of the other teams in the league, if it was still a Cornell/Harvard final in Albany? Then, it got bitterly cold.

Post Game

Post game took place at the Hong Kong with the Scorpion Bowls

Those things are tasty! It's like drinking juice! It did take quite a few plus a Long Island Iced Tea for me to achieve the desired effect. I yelled at another random begger guy on the street that night and then felt quite queasy.

Sunday's plane adventures

Sunday morning, I woke up to vibrations at my feet. I thought it was my phone, but I didn't see my phone. And then it vibrated again. Oh, it was my phone. US Airways had called to tell me that my 1:45pm flight had been cancelled for "aircraft maintenance". This is NOT the first time they've cancelled a flight for aircraft maintenance. Now, if you were scheduling a fleet of air crafts, wouldn't you have one or two that were "spares" that wouldn't be in use and you could rotate in if one of the places required maintenance? So I called their 800 number and had my flight changed to the 12:45pm flight. While on the phone I also started getting stern with the person on the other end because I asked, "Is this flight also going to get cancelled too?" and she didn't answer. Finally, I said, "I asked a question." Bloody hell, I may still be drunk, but when I ask a simple yes or no question, I expect an answer. She said she couldn't really hear me. Okay.

So I get myself to Logan and try to check in. I have this bad habit of showing up about an hour before my plane is scheduled to leave. When I get there, I find that DC and NYC flights have their own special tiny counter. And the line was LONG. I could maybe combine my stuff together to not have to check luggage but when I tried to get my ticket from the kiosk, it said to see an agent. Now I was swearing at the person I spoke to this morning for messing up my itinerary change. If there was no line and I didn't have the kiosk problems, I'd be all set. But having to wait in line, checkin would close before I got to the front of the line and I'd have to reschedule to the 2:45pm flight. I get to the front of the line and hear that they've cancelled the 12:45pm flight due to the weather. Before I left, I heard that we were supposed to get light snow and some icy rain. I didn't htink it was anything to worry about, other than an annoying layer of ice to scrape off my car. So I'm wondering how bad the situation really is down here. After checking in and getting myself on the 2:45pm flight, I go grab some food to help ease the pounding headache and since I thought my body could use something other than alcohol to process. I also texted Amber with the question "How's the weather down there?" Her response:

A picture of her boyfriend's car with the snow that had fallen during the night.

Holy crap! No wonder we're grounded! I make myself comfortable in the waiting area and took a picture of Widdershins before starting my afternoon of waiting and knitting:

Boy, was I glad I was making knee highs! I had quite a while to go before I ran out of yarn! Now, if I finished this sock before I got on the plane, that would not have been a good thing. I also took a nap...still hungover at this point. And then I knitted some more. And then they announced various flight cancellations. And then a plane flew in and I noticed that it had the Philidelphia Eagles logo on it.

Eww. Eagles.
The DC sports fans had trained me well. Strangely, they were flying that plane down to National. Well, it flew down, couldn't land, and came back. They had everyone get off the plane and reschedule. Sometime during this time, I remembered the last time I had gone up to Boston for a Cornell/Harvard game. A storm had hit the northeast and shut down the airports in Philly, Baltimore and DC for a couple of days and Providence and Boston were also shutting down. I ended taking the train back. What fun, I'm doing this again! The announced more cancellations and I was lucky. I was ticketed for one of two flights they were going to try to fly down here. The gates got switched around a bit but no one moved since there was a chance we'd still leave from the same gate. Flights to LaGuardia were also delayed and cancelled cuz they were using planes stuck in DC. And then a sign, a plane was coming in. The passengers who arrived said they'd been sitting on the tarmac at National for 40 minutes. It was my plane. Whoo hoo! Then the crew showed up. Another good sign. And then we were on the plane. If sitting on the plane for hours is what it takes to get myself home, I'm all for it. I napped and knitted some more and finally we landed and sat and waited while they tried to clear a gate for us. National was a mad house. But eventually, I got my bag, and got to my car which didn't look so bad. It was still warm so the wet snow hadn't frozen yet so I was able to clear off the car quickly. Now I'm home, with the Oscars on, and with a headache. I'll leave you with a final picture of Widdershin, I'm ready to turn the heel: