Taken from my office building, with my phone, mere minutes ago.

But really? Other than this, it’s all rain. All the time. Don’t move here.

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Just one more reason to love Trophy.

(The s’mores cupcakes, with the tower of toasted marshmallow frosting, are also painfully divine. Also? They remind me of my grandmother, who was totally down with the 7-minute cooked frosting. It is the best frosting in the whole world. Mmmmm. Frosting.)

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There’s this funky place in Seattle called Queen Anne Dispatch. They have mail boxes and shipping services, but they also sell great shoes and baby stuff and random gifty stuff and bags and all kinds of stuff. I’d link to them but I’m REALLY irritated with them now, so I’m not going to. Nor, do I think, I will ever go back there and buy another pair of shoes, or another cool piece of clothing, or more socks, or another cool baby present, or any of the other things I’ve gotten there in the past.

See, it all boils down to incredibly shitty customer service.

I shipped another thing with them yesterday. Everything else I’ve ever shipped there has been handled with care and the people I’ve dealt with have been REALLY nice and professional, but the wheel that I dropped off yesterday was a completely different story.

It ended up being twice as much as I’d anticipated to have it shipped, which I understand - that’s UPS and not QAD. However, the total they gave me on the phone yesterday, and the amount that hit my account today were not the same number. And when I called to inquire as to why, the woman I ended up dealing with was REALLY, incredibly bitchy and nasty to me about it. With lots of dripping sarcasm and angst. I’m not sure what it was that I did to ruin her day, but holy shit.

Apparently the extra $20 they charged me was for the packing. I fully understand that packing a spinning wheel is not the easiest thing in the world, and that it had to be done well to prevent damage. And I’m FINE with paying for that. What I’m not fine with is being told that a grand total including packing is one number, and then being charged a different number, and then having someone get incredibly bitchy with me on the phone and telling me that it was essentially my fault that the person who gave me the total yesterday gave me the shipping only amount as the total.

She did insist on refunding the money. I did NOT ask her to do that, and she did it in such a way that it was very clear that she wanted it to make me run away and never, ever set foot in their store again, which is exactly what it did.

So. Their customer service absolutely blew today, and with any luck at least one person will read this and and take their business elsewhere. Nobody deserves the kind of treatment I received from them today.

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And then I cried like a sap. Go me! Not only that, but there’s photographic evidence, which I’m sure will be showing up on Peggy and Rebecca’s blog at some point in the upcoming days.

After waiting…. I don’t even remember how long now, my very own made-for-me Betty Roberts wheel is HERE! In my house! With yarn on it! That I spun! I’m still kind of a-twitter about it all and keep going downstairs to look at it and touch it. (If I didn’t have homework to do, I’d be downstairs spinning on it right now).

I got to meet Betty, who was a hoot and a lot of fun to hang out with, and met three other new Betty Roberts wheel owners - Paula, Susan, and Melinda (none of whom I have blog addresses for, unfortunately), and hang out in a room entirely full of Betty wheels (and a very friendly standard poodle named Shelby). SUCH a great day.

The pictures suck, but are all I have at the moment. There will be more on Peggy and Rebecca’s blog soon, though. And more here, once I find the camera.

Enclicken to embiggen:

And - the whole room full of Betty wheels (mind you, this is only what I could see from where I was standing. There were others that are off-frame.)

Yep, mine is the odd man out. Every other wheel in the place was dark wood. Mine is spalted aspen, and the inlay color is closest to the middle picture. It’s also sparkly. SPARKLY!

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Finally! In Seattle!
(And no, this wasn’t my entire lunch. I’m pretty sure I would have thrown up if I’d eaten the whole box. Probably.) (Also? I know there’s been one at Safeco Field for a while, but for those of us who don’t go to baseball games it doesn’t really exist.)

They’re in the food court at Uwajimaya now. Conveniently, right next to the book store with all the wonderful knitting books. What more could you possibly want?

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The one from the previous post. That was hanging on the wall in the Ivory Coast Room at the Scappoose Creek Inn.

There was a wedding there the weekend that Lara and I were there (in the 105 degree heat…), so we ended up in two different rooms. The first night we were in the Lewis & Clark room, which has a shower built into the closet (yes, it was exactly as weird as it sounds), and while it was a lovely room, it was a)on the ground level and b)right at the bottom of the stairs, so with a wedding party staying there that night, it was NOISY. Holy crap noisy. There were clots of people standing right outside the window yapping until the wee hours, and there were teenage boys running up and down the stairs from the ugly end of dawn until the wee hours of the morning. Never have I disliked teenage boys as much as I did that weekend.

The second night, though, we were upstairs, at the back, in the Ivory Coast room, which has this fantastic safari theme, complete with stuffed lion head on the wall. The Ivory Coast room was quiet (until the thunder storm, and then nothing was quiet), and extremely comfortable, and cute, and the lion head made me giggle every time I looked at it. Every time. Also? The shower was in the bathroom, not in the closet, which was a total bonus.

So. Now you know about the lion head. And which room to request when you go to Scappoose.

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So. The hand is well on its way to being healed, although I’ve still got another 4-5 months of random nerve pain to look forward to. Goody.

I have, actually, been knitting, although don’t have anything I can show for it at the moment. Soon, though. Soon. Soon I can take pictures of what I’m working on.

As for the seemingly random post title today, it’s really not. I swear.
My double-treadle Schacht Matchless with bungload of accessories is for sale. Do you need a(nother) really wonderful spinning wheel? It’s got tons of bobbins, a kate, a carrying bag, super fast and super slow whorls, and a woolee winder. If you’re interested in it, drop me a line at secretqllama (at) gmail (.) com. You know the drill with the email addresses.

EDIT: The Matchless has been sold! Thanks for all the interest!

But, in the mean time, pictures! From the last month of going places and doin’ stuff.

All from the trip that a friend and I took down to Scappoose, Oregon last month, and all from in and around the Scappoose Creek Inn. (lovely place, that)

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Without knitting.
pray for me. plague of locusts to follow.

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Yeah. Yay. Not broken.
Two bruised bones and a “very angry” nerve.
And hey! Only 6 days, a ton of x-rays, and a ct scan to find that out.
On the plus side, the orthopedist was hilarious and was nice enough to go with a removable brace instead of the cast that he wanted to put on it. 4 more weeks of brace, 6+ months for the pain to abate.
Good times…

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I’m at home today. With what is probably a fractured wrist. I say “probably” because the doctor that did the initial xrays couldn’t tell if what he was seeing was new damage or old damage (there’s a lot of old damage in this wrist). So he says “we have to splint it and send you across town for a CAT scan”. Unfortunately, however, the damn insurance companies now require pre-approval for stuff like this, and that pre-approval will take 24+ hours to get.

This makes absolutely NO sense to me. At all. Send people with broken bones HOME? TO WAIT? So someone can process some fucking paperwork?!

Needless to say, I’m not enamored with this idiotic new policy.

GRRRR.

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Seattle is, apparently, colder than Siberia at the moment.

And yeah. It’s getting old. Really, really old.
One should not, generally speaking, in this half of the world, be freezing one’s arse off at the bus stop, hunched down into a fleece under gore-tex jacket combo, in MID JUNE. Ferfuxake.

‘Course, then again, I get calls from folks I know all up and down the east coast, and they’re all dealing with temps over 100, so I guess it could be a LOT worse. At least I can put another layer on…

Bleh. I can has spring now? okthx.

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HA! Here’s a new one for this blog… Pictures now, words later (probably).

O made bread. I made bread. These two are her loaves. Mine were ugly (but tasty). We ate an embarrassing amount of bread today.

Two pics of O making butter. It’s really hard to shake the jar when you’re laughing. Homemade butter is yummy, though. Three an a half loaves worth worth of yummy, apparently. I feel no shame.

Then we made goat cheese.

We also made mozzarella, but it was yummy, and there are no pictures to show for it.

Nihon Vogue sweater number… 5? I think? More pics of it in the gallery - click on the picture to go see the rest.

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O got to go north to Lower Canadia with me a couple weeks back, and got to spend some quality time with Satan’s Handpuppet. Evil puppy is hard to photograph, as he never. stops. moving. ever.

All the pictures are like that - in focus kidlet, totally blurry evilpuppy.

Except this one, where he was going in for the NOM! on the camera:

Then there was some shoulder-surfing by Spike:

O also had a hat to show off (although she swears she made it AGES ago) - she spun it, she knit it (hell, she pulled the “pattern” outta her bum and made it up as she went along):

And, finally, more cherry blossoms, ‘cos they make me happy.

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Haven’t felt much like blogging lately, not because there’s anything wrong, mind you, but because every time I’ve thought of something to write about, I’ve been hours away from a computer.

I do have pictures to post, and there has been progress on the Nihon Vogue stuff (and the WooBoo sweater? it’s perfect in every way. I love it. I wear it a LOT - the purple one, on the other hand, not so much. I will be unravelling that one, redoing the swatching and the math, and reknitting it. I love it, but I don’t love it in its current form).

In the mean time, go check out Critterboy in the news: Seattle PI article about the MSG150 (the three in the pic are his coworkers, who started the whole thing).

And then check out what some people are doing with their lunches: bento gallery (and great source for bento-style lunch boxes!)

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All that driving to lower Canadia, all that math, all the homework, all of that.

The purple sweater was finished. FINISHED. Done. Ends woven in and everything. Turned in, proclaimed to be “very beautiful” by Jean (WOOT!), done done done. Well… Except for that tiny bit of “next time, you can do this other thing, if you want to…” from Jean, pointing out something about the neckline that was, once again, used as an example in front of the class.

See, I had followed what she’d taught us thus far when I did the neckline and ribbing, and it was fine, but there was (of course) a slightly different and better way it could be done next time. HA! And then I tried it on, and it was all perfect everywhere except the neckline. Of course. That was too big. WAY too big.

Here’s where the proofy bit comes in - my reaction to the neckline being too big? “oh, I’ll just RIP IT OUT AND REDO IT”. No swearing, no trepidation, nothing other than maybe a wee bit of excitement (which, honestly, strikes me as maybe a touch of insanity…). So I did. Ripped it right the fuck back. Didn’t even hesitate. It was SO freakin’ liberating!. RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIP! Then, of course, I got to pick up all those stitches again, and do a crapload of math because now I not only had to evenly space the decreases, but I had to not decrease across the center of the front, *and* I had to figure out how to space the decreases while doing 2×2 ribbing that matched the center stitches. And? And? I did it. It took a while, but the math got done and the decreases are spaced evenly into the ribbing and the ribbing matches at the center front and it won’t be too big this time.

Critterboy, of course, looked at me like I was a total loon when I started ripping the neckline back and doing all that math. And then especially when I was doing the triumphant happy dance when I finished it and it all worked. Heh.

This hasn’t been a tremendously difficult pattern, really, even with all the ripping back and redoing of the maths, but I’ve learned SO much on this one, and have absolutely lost my fear of crazy knitting math and pattern drafting. And that, my friends, makes it ALL worth it.

And in other news: MADRONA! Today! More on that later, after I’ve been and seen and (omg! Bluster Bay Woodworks!) bought…

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