An Eventful Week

Last week, Ms. Packratty went to STITCHES South, the big knitting expo.  She bought some yummy yarn to make some socks for Miss Adorable, her niece.  And learned a new knitting technique.  Entrelac.  Well, new to her, anyway.

Despite having to rip back when she overthought something and went astray, she's finding it addictive and interesting. Not sure exactly what sort of project it would be good for other than scarves or a pillow, but it does produce interesting fabric.  I wonder what felted entrelac would look like?







Work has been challenging and Ms. Packratty has been very tired when the end of the week arrives, but she got up bright and early and went to the Inman Park Festival and met up with her third cousin Stephanie.  Ran into Mark M. en route to the booth where Stephanie was volunteering and chatted a bit.

Finally got home around 6 p.m., tired and a wee bit sunburnt, but picked up a cute birdhouse at the request of Miss Jane, to be delivered next week.

Along with a couple of huge projects at work, Ms. Packratty is being headhunted by a company in the DC burbs.  She is quite ambivalent about moving - if she was going to move, DC would not be one of her first choices, even though it would put her closer to family members.  It is a ton of money more than she is making now, but living in DC is horribly expensive, so it really would not be more, plus which Ms. Packratty would have to still pay the mortgage on Chez Packratty as she does not contemplate leaving Atlanta permanently unless it is to decamp for Edisto Island or Italy.

In gardening news, Ms. P finally found some of those yummy yellow pear tomato plants and bought some for the community garden plot as well as one for the new planter box she bought to go by the front door.  Some of her herb pots need retirement have cracked and broken in the winter.  So she will put the planter box in their place. It is very clever, with a watering well and casters.  Time to plant basil.  I am always amused by people who buy basil plants already sprouted - the damned stuff sprouts like a weed, people! If you can't grow basil, you probably can't even grow  mildew on your shower grout!

Lovely bullfrog fished out of the condo pool ....

On catlessness

Ms. Packratty has had a cat in residence pretty much continually for the last 35 years. There was a short gap after the untimely death of Kahlua in the late 1970s, then another short gap after Minerva went to the Bridge in the early 1990s. Delilah followed Minerva and Rascal came (and left) after Delilah. I miss them all, but as I said, I think I'm going to let Charlie Rufus be an only child for a while.  On cool nights, though, she does rather sharply feel the absence of a cat.  Or Miranda, who although a canine, could snuggle with the bonelessness of a relaxed cat.  Charlie is too wiggly.

Nature abhorring a vacuum, she rather suspects that Bast will recat her at some point and is content, for now, to wait.

It's that season

Ms. Packratty has been serving on her condo board of directors for several years and serving is right - plus there is no time off for good behavior.  We've recently spruced things up around our modest pool and bought some new umbrellas and fixed up the existing furniture, along with having the pool replastered, putting in some new plantings and scrubbing down the pool deck, etc. 
Well, tonight a couple of the other members dragged down the new umbrellas, just delivered, to unbox them and while we were there we found a large and handsome bullfrog in the pool.  We netted him out and plopped him into the shrubs, but while we were sitting around admiring the pool, we kept hearing incredible croaking coming from the pool and suddenly realized that around the pool just above the waterline about half a dozen more frogs were clinging to the tiles and advertising for mates.  Sometimes there are some unexpected paybacks for otherwise largely thankless jobs.

Sunday Sunday

Made it to the first day of the Peachtree Road Farmers Market and got good food, but before and after had to deal with a migraine and discovered I had *one* dose of Imitrex left. And that means a trip to the doctor and two copays that I would much rather apply to my shrinking little bit of debt or my trip fund.

Got to do a library run and do wash, while staying close enough to home to get to the computer within 15 or 20 minutes because, of course, it's Ms. Packratty's week on call.

But the farmers market haul included some fava beans so I am going to try cooking them with a bit of pancetta and garlic and see how it goes. I clearly can't live on il Bacio lunches and yogurt as a primary diet. So I have to start cooking more and purer.

No, I'm not talking purer in the sense of the no fat, no meat, no taste fanatics, just about using ingredients that haven't been doused in chemicals. I'd like to be in a bit better shape before I tackle that Grand Canyon trip. Note to self, write off for more information this week and see how far in advance I need to make reservations.

Knitting

Ah, Easter season. The moon is full and work has been crazy.

Someone recently asked Ms. Packratty about knitting in Rome. And knitting in general.

Yes, Ms. Packratty did knit in Rome and got a lot of curious glances for it. Apparently knitting in Italy is only for nonnas or grandmothers and although Ms. Packratty is indeed old enough to be a grandmother (without any teen motherhood involved), she has been told she does not look it. So what would happen if Ms. Packratty started to knit while in line or waiting for a bus or whatever would be a lot of very open looking and the occasional bit of yarn petting and questioning, which was always interesting given that Ms. Packratty knew no Italian knitting words at all.
Ms. Packratty took these socks (Zauberball, gift from her mother) and finished the second foot and toe (except for Kitchenering the toe) on the plane over. She only tackled the Kitchenering after she was at the tiny apartment, had a good night's sleep and a fortifying glass of wine.









While she was there, she started a scarf from a lovely kit gifted to her a couple of years ago by Ms. T which had been waiting for the proper time to wade into – so something quick, simple and knitted with luscious yarns was definitely the proper time. The picture makes it less rosy than it really is, but it is yummy and rosy like the last gasp of a truly spectacular winter sunset.


Ms. Packratty knitted it on the Metro, on the Piazza outside the Pantheon, outside St. Cecelia in Trastevere, at the bus stop, in her little rented apartment. It was not done when she left Rome, but was too big to work on the plane, so Ms. Packratty cast on this sock while on the Leonardo Express train to the airport.







Yes, the train ride was smooth enough to cast on and join sock yarn on 00 dp needles, which is impressive and Ms. Packratty got a bit done on the train, in the waiting area from Hell (Note to airport designers – most planes carry close to 200 people these days and they almost always fly packed like sardines. Those same passengers are forced to come to the airport 2-3 hours before their flights, so supplying 75 seats at the gate area, no matter how tastefully designed, is NOT sufficient.) and a little bit on the plane, Unfortunately, the very chubby little man next to me kept doing things that put his elbows into Ms. Packratty’s knitting zone of comfort, (Ms. Packratty herself is not slim, but she is at least aware of the space she takes up and makes all possible effort not to intrude into the space of others. Her seatmate? Not so much.) so she did not get much done on the plane and since she came back, she was occupied finishing off the last of that scarf and starting the 10 Stitch Blanket in a periwinkle wool/acrylic blend for a co-worker whose spouse is expecting their first child.

I’m working it in a solid because I couldn’t find a blue dominant (yes, they know it’s a boy) that I liked that was a> suitable for a baby blanket and b> wasn’t either ugly, all synthetic or way too expensive to be a baby blanket. Love my coworkers, but I am not spending $100 on the yarn for a baby blanket. Maybe when Miss Adorable or her Brother Darling make me a great aunt, but not before then.

So she has 4 UFOs UnFinishedObjects) – a shawls whose edging she cannot for the life of her figure out how to knit on and is thinking of knitting separately and attaching later; a scarf for a coworker which is nine-tenths done but boring; the socks mentioned above; and the baby blanket. That’s a generous plenty, especially with the black cardigan sitting in a drawer in all its separate pieces waiting for sewing up inspiration to strike.

Plus there are other non-fiber related projects that want attention. Lots of attention, like getting the garden planted, washing Charlie, and giving away the last bits of cat related stuff. Ms. Packratty has decided that Charlie is going to be an only child for the foreseeable future.

Culinary Solace

Ms. Packratty has been suffering badly from food issues since her return to Rome. In addition to her issues with corn products in food, she is starting to wonder if all the additives and so forth in American food is part of the problem she has with her digestion. She ate very well in Rome and only suffered grumpy tummy once after a particularly rich meal that also included some bleu cheese. Sadly, within 10 days of her return, her stomach was once again in frequent revolt and she has pared back her menu to try to eliminate as many additives as possible. And it seems to help.

One great help is the lovely little pizzeria down the road from her work, a charming little place in a strip mall called Il Bacio. She has been lunching there since they opened and while she does not love everything there, there are many things that are spot on. For example, this is the sandwich (on foccacia bread) and salad that she picked up for lunch Wednesday.



















That's for well under $10. Ms. P is not mad about the pizza, preferring crustier stuff, but they do a good basic NY style pie and some interesting variations. But the salads are always wonderful and the house baked foccacia is always good. I wish someone would do some really seasonal only Italian cooking in Atlanta and perhaps teach people that there is more than pasta to Italian food.

Friends and changes

Ms. Packratty is rather sad. An old friend has abruptly and without any explanation or any honesty, effectively fired her as a friend. She suspects this former friend had her nose put out of joint by Ms. Packratty’s Italian adventure, although Ms. Packratty extended several invitations to undertake a joint excursion – her now apparently former friend had countered a proposal for a week in Rome and a couple of days in Florence with the desire to do the sort of city hopping that makes your head swim – i.e. if this is Tuesday it must be Turin.

Since we had such opposing ideas about Italy, Ms. Packratty had concluded that she needed to go to Italy by herself and had suggested to this friend that they undertake a Grand Canyon trip, since her FF lives in the West and has made much about her outdoors activities. That was shot down, first with the comment that her FF was not comfortable with wearing a bathing suit and then with the plea that she was no longer very outdoorsy, countering with the idea of taking a cruise to Alaska. Ms. Packratty started doing research and sent her some details for a late summer 2013 sailing and then was flabbergasted to receive a deadpan, unfriendly, unemotional and patently dishonest “I think we have different ideas about what a vacation is.”

Well, what is a vacation?

Some vacations are for learning, some are for relaxing, some are physically demanding, some are all of the above. Ms. Packratty’s Roman holiday certainly was all of those. What other things could a vacation be like? Constant motion, I suppose, or sitting still and imitating a log, but in between those two opposites, what else is there? What a vacation is not in my eyes would be a frantic slog from one city to the next with minutes instead of hours budgeted for museums, packing and unpacking and checking in and out of hotels.

If I go to Naples, I want time to see Pompeii, to go to the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli and spend half a day or more without time pressure, or wander through the Pompeii ruins until my feet are ready to drop off. If I go to Positano, I want more than a half day race to “see the sights” – I want to sit under an arbor, sip a limoncello and then go watch ceramic artists at work. You can’t do those things if you have allocated a week and you are trying to see most of the “boot”. You can rush around and do exhausting drive-by tourism or you can stop and concentrate and be in a place. Or two.

Am I sad? Yes, I am. I really treasured FF but apparently she has taken some offense and doesn’t want my friendship. I’m very sorry about that, but there’s absolutely nothing I can do. I know I have many faults as a friend, but lack of honesty and openness is not one of them and I am deeply offended at the way I was treated. However, knowing what I know about FF’s family and upbringing, I’m not surprised. Her family appears to suffer from one of the worst cases of emotional constipation I’ve ever heard of, although the only emotion her parents seemed to be perfectly free expressing was disapproval.

So I don’t know what FF’s underlying problem is. I’m sad about it, but you know – I can’t fix anything if she won’t be honest and open with me and I’m just not able to go digging for it. When someone lives 1000 miles away and you aren’t face to face with them, if they want to be hostile and evasive, there’s no way to get them to open up.

Do I like it? No, it’s always sad to lose a friend.

What am I going to do about it? Nothing. There’s nothing I can do. I’m going to send her the souvenir yarn I bought her in Rome, wish her well, tell her that I’ll be glad to listen if she ever decides to talk and get on with my life.

So next stop? Planning for that Grand Canyon trip. It seems only fair to alternate US trips with trips to la bella Italia.