Beyond Routine

I like my routines. In the morning I get up, turn on the stereo to listen to NPR news, do my ablutions, feed the cats, let them outside, dress for work, skim my email, let the cats back in, then go to work. I arrive at work half an hour before I start, fetch my breakfast from the cafe, then return to my desk to read blogs before I start my shift. There have been times when a change to my routine affected me (waking up late, being asked to start early at the last minute). I would feel shattered and recovering from that would take longer than the actual routine itself. I've gotten better over time, but I still like my routines. Part of it is being single and not answering to another.

The weekdays have their structure. The weekend has its own. But unlike the weekdays where work demands that I maintain a strict structure, the weekends are much more flexible. If I have no obligations planned, I can take a weekend and go do things at the drop of a hat. Aurora was one of those weekends. This weekend was too.

Friday I had a business trip to Salem. As part of my kit I included a knitting project: a pair of socks. It got a few kidding remarks but I'm used to that, and being able to knit on the drive down (I was pooling with three others) made the time go by quickly. At lunch we went out and as a matter of course I took my knitting, which I worked on as we waited for our pizzas. I dropped my bag of knitting into my handbag when the food arrived, but apparently I didn't drop it securely as when we left for home that afternoon I found it wasn't in my handbag. It was too late to go back. A phone call later confirmed that I had left the knitting at the pizzeria.

If you're a knitter, you know what it means to lose a project. Some things you think, "Meh, it's part of the risk." Some things aren't recoverable, like projects left on the bus or plane. But this project had two Addi Lace needles and Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks That Rock. Not a cheap thing to replace. Plus I knew where it was. I could have contacted folks from Confluence to go pick it up but then they would have had to either mail it to me or try to send it north with a Portland member -- something I felt was too much for me to ask. I opted to go fetch it myself.

Now the fun. When I posted to the Knitbloggers I was going to Salem to fetch my knitting, one of my buddies asked if I was going to the spinning going on at the Mission Mill Museum. Apparently there's a monthly meeting there that I wasn't aware of. I had originally planned to spend the day in Portland then head down in the late afternoon as the pizzeria didn't open until 5 pm. With this though I had the opportunity to meet some other folks who love to spin. They started at 10 am, so I figured I'd go down and play it by ear.

The ladies in the spinning circle were very friendly and as it turned out included Helen, with whom I had had a previous encounter at the Super Bowl weekend knitting party a year ago. While I was there I plied some merino/alpaca/silk blend that Susan of Abstract Fibers gave me for making a sample for her. Further conversation with Helen included an invitation to join her and her fellow knitters at the Blue Pepper. As the spinning group came to a conclusion at 2 pm and I was in need of a place to linger further in Salem, I went to the Blue Pepper. There I not only made my acquaintance with members of the Salem Ravelry group but also renewed my acquaintance with a lady (whose name unfortunately escapes me) I had known through my visits to Unraveled Yarns in Vancouver. I also met a local dyer, Stephania, who had come to drop off some fiber for some of the Ravelers and came away with some lovely Australian merino superwash top. At last the time came and I fetched my errant sock from Christo's Pizzeria and returned to Portland.