My Weekend

I am very excited....I had a meeting with my boss on Friday, and he wants me to take the lead in writing all of the grants and some business development for our department. This is a great opportunity for me, and if it works out, then I will just scratch my moving to China plans.

Plus, I demo-ed my sock machine on Saturday to a wonderful and excited crowd, and even had three people ask if I would knit socks for them! And one of them was a lady with only 1 leg, so she said she only needed one sock! Unfortunately, I had to turn them all down because I am so busy...... The other neat thing is that I was asked by the San Diego machine knitting guild to demo my sock machine during their monthly meeting......I said yes, of course......

I was so nervous to do the demo, because I am basically a newbie to sock knitting, but Helen at Newtons said I would be fine, so I showed up. The women for the first session were so excited, because apparently they all have sock machines but don't know how to use them. I gave them my caveat: I only started knitting in November and I don't know how to use the ribber yet (which was fine, since I forgot to bring it anyway), but I would take them through the process of knitting a mock rib hemtop sock. I was dripping sweat, but the women were so encouraging. They knew I was new and they just wanted to see someone actually using a sock machine. Thank goodness there were two wonderful and experienced sock machine knitters there, and they helped answer questions and helped me when I had problems.

Anyway, I showed them how to set-up and how to pick up dropped stitches (there were a lot of opportunities for that!), how to shortrow the heel and toe, etc. I showed them all the different parts of the machines and my tools. I also told them how lucky I was that the woman I bought my machine from was so generous and included everything I needed to start knitting, from extra needles to the buckle and weights to the stitch picker upper to the mesh bag that most women use to start knitting (I prefer the set-up bonnet now) to a video that showed me how to set up my machine to lots of different instructions and patterns for knitting a sock. The only thing I have bought for my machine was the yarn carrier thingee, but not because anything was wrong with the one that I received with my machine. I bought the new one a few weeks ago because I saw it on Laurie's (the lady I bought my machine from) machine and it has a slot on the top which allows one to take the yarn out. I really like it. Anyway, I also got to hear disaster stories about CSMs bought on the web, and how some machines didn't come with this or that....it made me realize how lucky I am! Thanks, Laurie!!!!! Laurie and I have become friends and still keep in touch, and now she's become a flatbed machine knitter, too!

Anyway, the women were so great...they were oohing and aaahing over my pathetic demo and basically, they made me feel great, despite the many dropped stitches and holes in the sock...they said they just wanted to see how a sock was made and didn't care about all my mistakes........What an ego booster!

And finally, last night my closest friends took me out to dinner for my birthday and it was fiasco. I picked a Filipino restaurant and took the liberty of choosing the food, since I was early and I know Filipino food. Well, how was I to know that Liz is allergic to seafood, Robin doesn't eat pork, Marny is a vegetarian, and Janet doesn't eat garlic or onions? I ordered this HUGE platter of meat (which my sister in law recommended) that had tons of pork, chicken and beef marinated in a garlic sauce, lumpia (egg rolls) which was made of pork and shrimp, pancit (the noodles) with the seafood and pork taken out, but which was cooked with a lot of garlic, and garlic-fried rice. We ordered catfish for Marny but she didn't like it, Janet made a big scene about there not being any salad (lettuce is not one of the Filipino food crops, although there was a mango/tomato/onion/salted egg salad) and all the grilled fish being cooked with tons of garlic, but finally she found a garlic-free grilled tilapia she liked....the whole dinner was a disaster......but Robin and Liz liked the food, and I got to take home tons of meat, fried rice, and noodles.......