I think I was a bit more of a fuddy duddy this year than in previous years because I stuck to the hotel room for peace and quiet when we weren’t in meetings during this year’s annual conference for my corporation’s division (about 480 people) in San Antonio. I don’t find drinking to be that entertaining. Not being a prude about it; I’ve certainly sucked down a few brews, fine tequila, cheap wine, and expensive Remy Martin in my day. But it’s not as entertaining as it used to be, and drinking makes me feel bloaty and draggy the next day, so I usually limit it to just one glassful. This time I just wanted to sleep, knit, watch TV and get online after being pinned down in all-day meetings.
Which isn’t to say the meetings were bad — we had a former Olympic skiier and a workplace diversity/bias reduction speaker who had some useful insights and who were each vibrant and funny in their own way. And the head honchos did drag us out a bit to have dinner at Rio Rio Cantina (the mild salsa was flaming hot but good, and the frozen margaritas were EXCELLENT). And of course there was the night when we all got to play cowboys and cowgirls.
My friend and co-worker, Deb (on left) and I
hold down the benches and hold up a couple
of the souvenir cowboy hats.
We went to the Knibbe Ranch for an evening of line dancing, pool playing, grub-eating fun. I have two left feet when it comes to following dance instructions, so I just watched and took photos of more nimble-footed friends. Some folks had their picture taken astride what must be the world’s most placid longhorn bull, a mild creature named Oreo. (With a name like that, he’s got to be an easygoing critter.) I didn’t want my thighs to smell like, uh, bull the rest of the night — not that any thigh-sniffing was planned (darn it), but still. So I passed on that too. But I couldn’t resist a shot of Oreo’s reaction to all the dancing and commotion.
Meet Oreo. That’s one calm bull.
I also took my knitting to the ranch in anticipation of having little to do besides vie for position at the pool tables (too crowded) or stomp on everyone’s toes, including my own, out on the dance floor. And once there, I found a fabulous use for the cowboy hats we each received as souvenirs.
Valiantly trying to knit amidst the clamor …
We were only there a few hours, some of which was eaten up by VP speeches, so I didn’t get a lot of knitting done, just a few inches on my socks. I’m making the Relax and Breathe socks from the Betsy Lee McCarthy book, “Knit Socks!” — which I picked because I wanted an excuse to learn Fair Isle knitting. I’m doing them in Debbie Bliss Cashmerino. Mmm, soft goodness. The colors are peach (main color), a mossy pale green, beige, and butter yellow.
I took the third bus back to the hotel for a quiet night in the room. (Sometimes it’s just too hard to resist taking advantage of those rare times alone — at least they’re rare for me!) I realized I was making a tangled mess of the Fair Isle portion of my socks anyway and stopped until I could get back to my room and check out the KnittingHelp.com site, which showed me a simple technique for holding a yarn color in each hand. It was easy and looked so cool doing that!
Now I’ve got to look up something on preventing “color jog” and I’ll be all set. I did go ahead and rip out the work done because I wasn’t happy with the look of the top cuff. It looked a bit large and floppy.
(It looks better in the photo than in real life, actually.) I’m going to try a second time with the alternate version of the pattern, which uses a garter-stitch rolltop. So I frogged, studied my yarn a bit more, and decided that I was happy being a fuddy duddy for the night. After all, my room really did have a great view — at least from my vantage point.
A room with a view
P.S. I’ll have more postings next week; my husband’s flying over for the weekend and we’re going to an aviation museum, some underground caverns, at least one yarn shop and (maybe) an alpaca farm. But no more blogging until Sunday or Monday night! ;o)
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