Back in the City

Yeah - I'm home from Cedar Rapids!  Actually it was a fantastic trip, as work trips go - I learned tons of stuff and feel way more confident now just from walking around the plant with people who know what they're doing, and forcing myself to do things that I felt a little uncomfortable doing.  I gotta say though, that flood REALLY devastated that little town.  All the houses had piles of stuff sitting out on the curb - not just couches and whatnot, but pieces of their houses like duct work and lathe and plaster from the walls.  It was hard to tell if people were even living in them - the ones closest to the plant were definitely empty and even though I saw several volunteer groups cleaning them out and gutting the damaged parts, I heard that the city may not even let them rebuild.  I don't know.  it was sad.  It's obviously a fairly economically depressed area anyway, and it made me wonder what those people are doing now - I don't think anyone got much in the way of insurance.  

Anyway, on a cheerier note, like any good knitter, I found my way to a knitting shop while I was there!  I had kind of a lot of time to kill because I took a pretty early flight on Tuesday and I was out driving around after I checked into the hotel.  I stopped in a little quilting shop because sometimes they have a bit of yarn too.  They didn't, but told me about a place not far away, and even called to make sure she was still open.  I wish now that I'd bought something - even a couple fat quarters - from them because they were awfully sweet!  They gave me directions and I guess my excitement got me all bejiggered up because I made a right instead of a left out of the parking lot and wasted about 30 minutes going the wrong way!  So I turned around and flew back the other way - past the quilting shop again - and on to the Crazy Girl yarn shop.  She closed at 6pm and because of my stupid wrong turn in Albuquerque, I was really cutting it close - it was like 5:45 when I pulled up, but I thought maybe she'd stay open a little longer for me.  I was wrong.  She was pretty much ready to start closing up right after I walked in - I even explained my plight, and the fact that I was from Ohio!  Regardless, it was a really cute little place.  I wanted to find some souvenir yarn that wouldn't be something I could easily get at home.  She had some Schaeffer yarn which I don't think I've seen around here in any shops.  I only had a few minutes to think - and she had a skein of Schaeffer Susan (100% pima cotton - 470 yards of probably a DK weight) that was part of the Color Concepts line which is a series created for memorable women, which I thought was kind of cool - this one is called Frida Kahlo and I think it'll make a fantastic Montego Bay scarf! I took a picture of both sides to show all the colors in it. 

 Oh yeah, it was $34 - which is not something I'd probably spend on yarn if I was at home, but there's something about traveling the makes me feel like it's not really real life - plus I only had like 5 minutes to make a decision and it's easy to just say "yeah, why not!" in such a situation!