Bargains and Bibs
4:03 p.m. - 2007-04-02


I had an exciting week. There was the adventure of running into the Knitting Machine Lady in Michaels, though at first I did not know who she was, just thought she looked familiar. She used to own the sewing machine shop in the neighboring town, and her husband did all the repairing. I always took my machines to them and bought my Elna knitting machine there. She told me that she still had some stock left from when she sold the store some years ago and was eager for me to come over to her palce and make an offer. I, who own 4 knitting machines, was not in the market for one, but my sister wants one and my daughter does too. I was not confident that the price would be very low, but I reasoned that it would be one of two scenarios: she was cleaning out old stuff and just wanted to get rid of it, or she saw a patsy and wanted to make a quick financial killing. I went over to her place (wow, gorgeous apartment! Fabulous view!) on Saturday to look things over. I ended up getting two machines, a bulky for my sister, and a standard for Melissa. The other two standards were a little dented so I had to pass them by. I paid a very low price, about a quarter of what I paid for the same model when I bought it years ago, and one was still in the factory box, unopened.

After I returned from this coup, he and I went to the movies for the first time this year to see Wild Hogs. This movie is not high on the intellectual scale, but we laughed ourselves silly and enjoyed it immensely, especially the end. If you go to see this movie, do not leap up and leave the theater the minute the screen goes black because there are after scenes that run during the credits, and they are hilarious.

On Sunday we got to attend the milestone birthday celebration of his best friend from high school, Dennis M. It was held at a restaurant in Almond River, the same place we held EG's birthday party. It was really nice. The spouse gave the birthday toast and once again I was impressed at what a great extemporaneous speaker he is. This restaurant has an elegant buffet lunch, with prime rib, seafood, a breakfast buffet with mondo bacon and cheese blinzes, whipped cream etc, but more in its favor, it had a great dessert buffet with little tarts, puddings, and other elegant tidbits. You don't usually think of a buffet as classy (think Las Vegas), but it was.

Today I am making bread and working in the garden, and sewing on the green shirt for Melissa. I also started the ribbings for the dark red Fiesta top, and cut out some baby bibs. I decided to see how some of my stash of fabric samples would look as bibs, since some of the samples are children's theme fabrics. The answer is they look great, so I have 5 bibs cut out and ready to quilt.

We had fun watching Amazing Race last night, and though we never really liked Team Guido, I ended up liking how solid and committed a couple they were. Twenty years as a couple is a great achievement in any universe.