Now Norma Knits

Show and Tell -- My Utah Economic Stimulus Package

These days are busy.  I am spending a lot of time (and money) on professional development and self-improvement and not working (gainfully) too much.  Such is the life of a freelancer.  At least right now I have the time to do the education and training that for so long I hadn't been able to find a good time to do.  And because I'm also tired from my whirlwind trip, I'm glad I have some show-n-tell to make a little blog post.



Left:  Red coral necklace and earrings, from the Sundance Catalog Outlet Store.

Right:  Handmade turquoise necklace from the T.P. Gallery in Salt Lake City.

*Love*
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The green, leaf-shaped, and round brownish red buttons are from Unraveled Sheep, but I bought them all so there are none left.  Sorry.
 
The red oblong buttons are from Blazing Needles, and they are for my red cardi, which is soon to be finished.

ShiBui Sock Yarn (for making a summer tank) from Blazing Needles, also.

My camera crapped out on this trip.  I am done spending big money on cameras.  I am not a photographer -- I just take pictures -- and fairly crappy ones at that.  I am not careful enough with my cameras, the lenses get wet and dirty if I take them out to the garden with me, etc.  I can't be bothered to try -- I've got too many other things to do -- and I don't want a heavy or large thing to lug around.  I am strictly a point-and-shoot person, and I am finally at peace with that.  So Margene took me to Costco, about three minutes from her house, and we were in and out in five minutes.  For $129, I got a camera that will do the job -- 'til I ruin it again, I suppose.

And then we have this mystery object, a gift from Cheryl:




Here I am, showing it to the stitch-n-bitch group at The Jitterbug Cafe. Please note the protective posture.

Mile-High Blogging

Greetings from up high in the sky.  I'm currently blogging using Notepad on my laptop, since I have not yet loaded Word on this computer and can't get into Typepad up here.  I've got a seatmate on the left who is too big for the space and a bit oafish and clumsy (redundant, I know), who keeps on bumping things, taking up my space, spilling water, and basically being a pain in my ass.  (He says he dreams of being rich enough to always fly first class.  Yeah, me too.)

On the right across the aisle is a 45-year-old (ish) sophomoric ass.  He's just too cool for the rules.  Doesn't want to hook his seatbelt, so camouflages it when the flight attendant comes by.  Keeps on playing with his iPhone, and keeps on hiding it as the flight attendant goes by, even after they have made the announcement several times to turn off all electronic devices.  She finally catches him, and when she asks, "Are you closing that up now?" he says "Yeah," puts it down, but as soon as she walks by, he picks it up again. 

Why are people such jerks?

I'm on the last leg of my journey home, Atlanta to Burlington.  Go figure:  Salt Lake City to Cincinnati to Atlanta to Burlington.  Could we GET any more convoluted?  (Actually, yes...I know it could happen.) But the flights have all been on time and relatively comfortable...despite being so FULL.  I've been knitting on the red cardi the whole way, and I've just now hit the WALL.  I.can't.knit.another.stitch; I think you know how it is. 

I took a slightly unorthodox approach and sewed up the seams of what I had finished as of this morning. All of it's finished except for one sleeve, the neckline trim, and the buttons.  Then I started knitting the second sleeve.  I'm about two-thirds done, but I need a rest.

As Smith was driving me to the airport this morning, he said that he thought I'd worn everybody out, which is a good thing. They wore me out, too.  And that, too, is a good thing, except for the fact that when I get back I have to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed first thing in the morning for another online training session.

Ah, well. Keeps me young. 

Anyhoo, I'll import this into Typepad when I get home, along with a few pictures of the long weekend.  I have lots to show you -- yarn, jewelry, flowers, lots of smiles, a new wee camera.  I had just the best time.  I love those Utah grrls.  Here's a big enthusiastic, sloppy thank you and shout out to my lovely hosts Cheryl and Margene and their lovely spouses.  And to Miriam who text messaged me when I hadn't been in town for more than half an hour, saying, "Are you here yet?!" and to Susan (and Margene all over again) for taking a day off work to be with me and for helping me model the gorgeous stole that Cookie knitted for me, and to Shelly and Laurie and all the rest of the women and men at the stitch-n-bitches.  And to the owner of Blazing Needles who welcomed me with a hearty, "Hi, Norma!  Welcome back!" when I went in.  (Pity I'm blanking on HER name right now.)  And to the owners of T.P. Gallery for giving me so many laughs and such lovely jewelry.  And to fish tacos and pork chops and green jello and sweet (but shouldn't be) rolls and milk frothers and sex talk in the garden of Brigham Young's lion's den.

 

Dinner Out

More to come..... I'm flying back to VT today....

For Cookie

I'll Tell You Something: The Utahans Are Making It Hard For Me To Resist Moving Here

It was a terrific seminar; I got a warm welcome from the court reporters and did some fabulous networking. It was very worthwhile to fly out here for it. 

More great food.  (This time Italian.)

We had wine and knitting with Susan, though the wine this time did not have such a story of romance and intrigue attached to it as it did the last time.   

I finished the right front of the red cardi, and cast on for the first sleeve.  One of the things on the agenda today is to find buttons for the sweater.  I'd like for the buttons for that sweater to come from here.  We might be going to a baseball game if the weather cooperates.  It's been quite cool and rainy.  If it's warm enough today, hopefully we can do the photo shoot for Cookie's latest wrap.  If it's too cold, we'll all just retire to Blazing Needles and the SLC Stitch 'n Bitch.

Definitely no mundane ruts around here. 

 

Trying to Stay Out Of My Mundane Rut

Dateline Salt Lake City.  Just in from a wonderful, fun-filled day and evening out with my wonderful host Cheryl, and Margene, Miriam, and Laurie.  

Cheryl and I spent the afternoon walking around Salt Lake City, shopping, and having Kouing Aman and lattes at the stupendously good Les Madeleines. 

Don't know what a Kouing Aman is?  Neither did I.  However, it looks like this:

 

...and when I eat one, it elicits comments from nearby diners similar to -- well, you know that famous scene in When Harry Met Sally?  Yeah. "I'll have what she's having."

Cheryl recently finished her Thermal sweater.  It fits me and suits me so well she has decided to give it to me.  Gorgeous.  Gorgeous. 

 

Here I am modeling it next to a very big .... you know. 

How 'bout that smile?  Am I having fun, ya think?  I am not sure, but it's possible that Cheryl has alerted the Utah authorities to check my luggage for a pumpkin-colored pullover before I leave the state.  I wore it all night when we went out on the town and had the most delicious southern barbecue I've ever had. 

Why?  Because it fits me perfectly and matches my new dinosaur bone pendant so well, that's why.

 

The one on the left I bought here in Utah last year.  The one on the right I got yesterday at the TP Gallery, a place that was recommended by a friend who recently came to Utah, and where Cheryl and I spent a long, long while being rowdy, having a barrel of laughs, and haranguing the owners.  So.much.fun. 

I was having trouble staying out of the clutches of an Australian bloke who was there, and at the same time trying to decide between several green turquoise pendants.  I started asking the merchant where the various stones came from, and they were all from states around Utah, but not Utah itself.  I said, "What do you have from Utah?" 

"Dinosaur bone," he said.

I pointed to the one I was wearing around my neck and said I wanted to see what he had.  He brought some over, and I fell in love with the red one above.  I was still undecided between it and the green ones. 

I finally said, "I think it has to be the dinosaur bone.  What do you think?"

This is not your ordinary store owner, who might actually want you to be happy and buy his stuff.  No, not him!  Instead, he said with considerable snark, "OK, fine!  If you want to stay in your mundane rut."

Laugh?  I thought I'd die!

So today I have resolved to try harder to get out of my mundane rut.  Wanna join me?

Good Morning From BTV

Thanks to the wonders of free WiFi and a new long power strip in the gate waiting area, I greet you bright and early from BTV.

And, well, it pains me to report that the honeymoon was a painfully short one.  The relationship was not consummated.  Transcriptus interruptus, if you will.  I might be petitioning for an annulment, even.

Even after all that testing, and a successful setup, at eight minutes before the event last night, one of my colleagues put my computer case down next to me and might have disturbed the connection or something (I'm just blaming him because he's not here to defend himself -- you know how it goes).  The computer froze; the writer would not register in my transcription software.  I tried restarting and rebooting and disconnecting and reconnecting, changing the com ports --  everything I could think of, and could not get it to work. 

My wonderful right-hand man, who has just had knee surgery, literally ran out to my car to get the expensive machine that, thank the powers that be, I had decided to bring along as backup in case I needed it.  I did.  Need it.  He ran into the room at one minute before the event, and I was hooked up and ready to go. 

Can you say "stress"?   I owe him a White Russian, he told me.

But everything went off without a hitch, and amazingly I made almost no errors, even using the errant (maybe it's not so bad after all?) Ferrari machine.  Except for the fact, of course, that the event went 45 minutes over.  That 45 minutes was supposed to be spent by me driving to Montpelier to scope out another job that I have scheduled for next week.  Needless to say, I didn't make it. 

So now I've had to repack everything and rearrange my thinking about the seminar.  Hopefully I have not forgotten some important piece of equipment or cable or something.  But the important thing is, I'm on my way!  (And I made a point of getting to the airport super-early because of going through security with the steno machine.  Even long before 9/11 when I used to travel with that thing, it would be a "fun" experience going through security.  But this morning, though it did get some special attention, it wasn't bad at all -- just a quick, "you have to test this" to a TSA person.)

Never a dull moment over here at Normaville.

Heads up, Utah, HERE I COME!

Practically Worn Out

I feel like I aged a year yesterday. 

But onward and upward.  I've got quite a hectic day in the works for today, but I did manage to get my packing done and am [like you would NOT believe] looking forward to my trip west. 

One of the things I did yesterday is test-drive my "new" refurbished -- and I do mean refurbished -- steno machine by listening to and writing This American Life for over an hour.  The new machine is an el cheapo older student (!) model, stripped down, gutted of everything I don't need as a CART and captioning reporter (e.g. paper and paper tray, ink, ribbon, memory, etc.), with only the stuff I do need for that task.  The outer case is of an even MORE primitive machine, because at the repair shop I bought it (sight unseen, even), they wrote me in a note, the best case they had was from a different model. So the innards are a 400 student model, but the case says it's a 200 student model.  It's all spiffed up, shiny and solid, and works like nobody's business.  The feel was quite different from what I've been using (you know, THAT one), and it took me a while to adjust to it, but it pretty much sings under my fingers.  I could feel the tension melt out of my arms and my shoulders and my neck as I was writing.  And that is a very, very good thing.

Sadly, it won't suffice for depositions or court work because it doesn't have memory or paper or backup, so I will have to come up with an alternative for that should I ever get back to that work. Which I hope I do not, but one never knows.

The young man and his mom -- they have a family steno repair business -- they knew exactly, EXACTLY, what I needed.  The mom is a court reporter probably about my age.  When I sent in my fancy machine for an overhaul, I told them over the phone what the problems were, and I also mentioned (I just mentioned it offhandedly, not thinking it was at all relevant to their repair) that I'd been having terrible tendinitis.  The young man called me back and said, "Can I ask, did you learn on a manual machine?"

Uh, yeah, I AM that old.  Yes, I did.

"That's the problem.  You're writing right through the Mira.  And when you said you'd been having tendinitis, I figured."  (Thank you, Dr. Steno Repair Guy.  But he really got it right.)

He and his mother went on to explain (at different conversations) things about stroke depth and tension and contacts, and all kinds of things that made my eyes gloss over, but they seemed to make sense when I thought about it.  Still, I didn't want to throw good money after bad, so I took this one back and tried to work with it.  It just keeps getting worse.  So I said I wanted to take him up on his radical, counterintuitive idea of trying the stripped-down, souped-up student model as just a straight CART and captioning machine. 

My new little rebuilt roadster reminds me of a car custom-built of random parts by a really great mechanic.  It's a good solid machine, for a really great price, but not half as fancy (hell, not a QUARTER as fancy) as the machine that I paid over $5,000 for, which didn't work for crap.  What I needed back was really the machine that I had beFORE the fancy one, which was the best machine in the universe (it's the one pictured in the banner up above).  But I fell for the hype, and I sold my old wonderful workhorse, thinking that the parts would no longer be available for it and thinking I needed the latest and greatest new thing (there's a lesson there, I think). 

The biggest selling point of the new fancy one was that it is paperless.  I didn't want to be bothered buying and storing and loading all that paper anymore, and having the clunky paper tray sticking out from the machine.  But in terms of performance -- bloody awful.  Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes.  All of which I thought for two and a half years were mine.  I of course thought that my skills were going downhill, rather than realizing that it was the finicky, fragile, overpriced fancy sports car that wouldn't stay on the road and fought me every step of the way.  Well, I finally analyzed the mistakes that were happening and saw the patterns.  It was a light-bulb moment. 

So, great.  I'm headed off to a skills-based seminar* with a bunch of other court reporters who are going to see the hick from Vermont arriving in [what they are going to think is] her jalopy. 

I'm thinking I should wear a blonde big-hair wig and stretch pants pulled up over my stomach, a calico blouse, light blue eyeshadow, stick-on fuchsia fingernails with rhinestones, and be chewing gum.

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*Many of our seminars are just "talk," so don't require the bringing of the equipment.  This one (or at least a good part of it) is all about [steno] writing and skills building. 

Roofers' Rage

I went outside yesterday to start digging a trench for the asparagus, but I got a little bit sidetracked: 

I think we need a gnome.  Or a gigantic toad. 

Then it started to rain in earnest and I was worried about my BlackBerry drowning, so I had to go in.  And thank goodness for that, because I don't really think I could take listening to the non-stop bickering between the roofing guys on the house behind mine.  It was about whether or not one of the guys did or didn't look for a nail gun on the roof, which was left in the gutter the night before. 

Holy Mother of Beelzebub. 

How many times can a large group of so-called grown men say, "Yes I did."  "No you didn't" and many variations of same, as well as "At least I didn't do such-and-such like [insert name of choice here]" and "At least I remembered to..." and "Why didn't you yell at Jason when he did the same thing"!?  And the boss.  OMG. He was a born leader -- NOT. 

"You should say to yourself, 'There were three hammers.  How many hammers do we have now?'"  

"I did."

"No you didn't."

"I did."

"You should ask, 'How many nail guns did we have out today?  We had four nail guns.  You should count the nail guns and make sure you have four nail guns."

"I did."

"No, you didn't."

"At least I remembered to..."

"No you didn't."

"You should ask, 'How many hammers were there?'  There were five hammers.  You should check and make sure you have FIVE hammers."

"I always check if there are five hammers."

"Then why was there a hammer stuck in the gutter, then?  Tell me that!  I bet when you go home, you know which room the TV is in, don't ya?!"

"I have a TV in every ROOM!"

"Jesus Christ.  You do not."

"I do too."

"No you don't.  Why is everybody standing around here doing nothing?  We're gonna be rained on again pretty soon."

"I'm working.  I'm always the only one working."

"No you're not."

"At least I'm not doing what Jason always does."

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FOR FUCKSAKE.

Shining examples of the male species these were not.  I was ready to take my garden spade, go over there, and start takin' 'em out, one by one.  And that's only because I don't own an AK-47. 

I kept thinking about what I read somewhere on the 'net that old instructions for planting asparagus began, "Bury a horse."  I figure mine could start, "Bury a man."  The fertilizer value might be quite a lot less, but then again, there had to be at least five of 'em up there on that friggin' roof.

Much Calmer Now

My mail carrier has been quite busy bringing me batches of Calmer.  Very pretty, hm?  I think Abigail is going to put her name on that lighter blue shade called Pool -- it's her favorite color.  Then again, so is the other blue.  

One of my favorite memories of an "Abigailism" is about color.  I always have been partial to red cars, and for all of her life I had had a red car.  I was going to buy a new car when she was about 14, and of course I was going to choose red.  She very loudly expressed her opinion about that:  "Mommmmmm.  Choose a different shade of red.  Like.....BLUE!"  It makes me laugh every time.  (But I chose dark red.  Heh.)

She seems to think I owe her a sweater.  She says the Rogue I made her doesn't count because it was made when I was just a beginner. 

Ahem?!

Speaking of Calmer (and red), I finished the left front of the red cardi last night. 

I was sort of hoping I'd be a tad closer to the finish line by today.  I had hopes of wearing a new red cotton cardi when I go to Utah this weekend.  It still could happen.  There's a lot of flying time to get from here to there.  

Yes, Margene has been spreading the rumor and it is true -- I'm going to Salt Lake City for a seminar this weekend.  But we all know the real reason is to go visit my Utah friends.