Too many choices

This week I have been doing a lot of knitting, but not making a whole heck of a lot of progress. Last night I was even contemplating declaring myself "done" with knitting once I run out of yarn. Ha! That lasted until this afternoon when I got purple & red woolease to make my daughter a "red hat ladies" scarf for her red winter coat. Last night I stopped on the way home and picked up a book called "Not Just Socks" which has patterns for self patterning sock yarn being used for socks, gloves, legwarmers, scarves, hats, you name it. I've been wanting to make myself gauntlets or fingerless gloves, so that was my first intention, but then I realized there was a pattern for afterthought heel socks, so that's what I cast on for last night with some of the yarn I got from Knit Picks a week or so ago. I also picked up a bunch of new stitch markers (the lost sock fairy seems to be getting into the knitting implement business - I seem to be losing them at Mach speed!) and a Crocheknit cable hook to use with the woolease I picked up today for that scarf. Let me just save you all the wonder and tell you that it's a very long process to get any substantial length built up, and you'd certainly do better with either crochet or knitting than trying to combine them both and coming up with something sort of sloppy looking. I picked up the stitch markers to use on my Clapotis scarf, which is coming along, however I am still doing the set up rows - I have about 30 rows left to go before it's the correct width and I can start dropping stitches.

Oh, another fun thing I did today - went to a new store that opened here, "Steve & Barry's University Sportswear." I've seen the store on my trips to Buffalo but had never been inside of it. LOVE the store!!! Guess where my christmas shopping will be done? Everything in the store is 9.98 or less! Even coats! I'm not a sports fan, but they have other cool stuff like tshirts with cool sayings on them (I got dh a hoodie that says "I see dumb people" and a ribbed shirt he can wear to work, and a New York faux-long sleeve under short sleeve shirt in an awesome shade of pink that I've found I look awesome in - and it came in my size XXL - all 3 items came to 30.17 with tax!) I asked the cashier if the 9.98 or less pricing was permanent or just for the grand opening, and he said that the prices might go up a little, but not much - according to the website nothing is over $10 in any of their stores - but the guy also told me that the Buffalo store also has a high price of 7.98. In my town we had this awesome mall built in 1990, which rapidly declined to 3 anchor stores (ie - Sears) and a few vitamin (GNC/Vitamin World) & sporting good stores like Champs & Footlocker. Even the foodcourt emptied out over time. Well, a new developer bought the mall around this time last year, worked out tax breaks in order to get the ball rolling. They renamed the mall "Medley Centre" ( I remember when they opened the mall 15 years ago and it was named Irondequoit Mall and on our town markers at the edge of town, they said "Home of Irondequoit Mall" - There was such outrage from the townspeople that they eventually took them down - they said that we were much more than a place with a mall. ) What has been really sad for me is that I remember spending so much time there as a teenager, I worked there for several years, at CVS (where I met my husband), Electronics Boutique, Lechters, Lauriats Books. My husband & I met there and had a lot of friends there. And then the place turned into a ghost town, where the only people there were either the geriatric coffee crowd, the power walkers, and the shoplifters. There had been rumors that people were being mugged and attacked there, and of course no one ever made a strong enough point that these incidents were usually urban legends, so the fear started bleeding into the community of snobby suburbanites. People have been critical of the mall since day one, saying it was a mistake to build it in the first place. These pompous assholes are the reason the place fails, because people like them are the ones making the decisions as to what should be in the mall... and they think they have their hand on the pulse of the shoppers in our area. The mall is on the city border, and a lot of urban culture is centered around showing off certain things, like the brand of shoes and clothing, the jewelry, the electronics... and brand name stuff doesn't come cheap. Instead of having those stores in our mall, where it might attract undesirable shoppers, we make them drive across the city and spend their $150 on sneakers in another suburb. Somehow, that was making sense to the decision makers. On the other hand, my wealthy cousins will go out of their way to purchase something "average" at the best price they can find. I'm just hoping that the mall gets back in working order, because it's a shame to see it going to waste. They are opening a kids play area next month, which I can't wait to see. I am the type of person that will frequent a place that I want to see succeed, even if it's not the "best" place to go. I figure that if we all give up on the newbies, places like my favorite yarn shop wouldn't exist. I thought it was humorous to see all the town board folks there to observe the shoppers actually showing up there today... the town supervisor taught me Clarinet as the music teacher when I was in 5th grade, one of the other board members was the career placement person at the business school I attended, failed me on my mock interview because my skirt was too short (ok, now, ya'll know how conscious I am of my weight and that I'm overweight - I've NEVER been accused of wearing anything too tight/short before or since), and the only person she succeeded in getting a job was herself.

Anyway, off the soapbox...

After the mall, we went to lunch and the woman behind me had a kureyon felted bag that was looking as ratty as mine do after a few weeks of wear. I'm going to start a new felted bag using some of the Cascade 220 I have stockpiled. Not sure if it will be striped, intarsia, or solid - I need to think some more about it. I do have that book 1000 knitted motifs that I could use. I've never done intarsia, although I have done a lot of fair isle, so maybe that will be my next challenge. My need for warm things may be going downhill again, they seem to have the temp in my office set to "brick oven" lately - to the point that I'm getting physically ill from being too warm, coming home feeling dehydrated, headachy and nauseated. But a new purse is never a bad idea!