Relief from Obsessing

Since Rich told me that my sidebar was completely ruined in Internet Explorer, I decided to take drastic measures and pull up the working backup file. Unfortunately, that meant going back a few weeks, but after working last night and all this morning, my sidebar is back in business! Gosh, I REALLY loathe IE’s difficult nature. You would think that it could be more flexible and forgiving like Firefox, but NOOOOO. At least one obsession has been satisfied. (Sigh)

With my site finally all set, Rich and I went to the Gaspee Days Arts and Crafts Fair down the street from our home. To explain, our little city celebrates the colonial civil disruption of the Gaspee Days every year. Everyone in the United States remembers the Boston Tea Party, but almost no one outside (and even in) of Rhode Island has heard of its earlier and bigger incident, the “Burning of the Gaspee” in a nearby cove. When I moved to our neighborhood, you should have seen the looks on people’s faces when I asked about it. The difference between Boston’s Tea Party and the Gaspee incident is that the Bostonians tossed the tea in their bay, the Warwick residents burned the whole ship. How is THAT for showing rebellion?

Anyway, I figured today would be a good day to hunt for stitch markers or ingredients to make them. Since misplacing the ones from Jill and Barbara (except for that single precious one in my baby sweater!), I really want to make some, and have been obsessing about it enough that visited Michael’s after knitting on Wednesday to buy jump rings and charms. The hunt turned up something totally unexpected. First, I met very cool Sarah Jane whose “Creations in a Lil Black Dress” booth is full of her yarn, crocheted, and sewn items. If you can, visit her site and comment on her blog! The second was finding a basket of $1.00 bracelets and necklaces at another booth.


Now that I have found beads for potential stitchmarkers, and met another fiber blogger, I felt a calm in the bead obsession. However, I had a bit of a distraction. Below is a picture of bookmarks featuring Samuel Kim’s A-MAZ-ing calligraphy. In his boothe, he and his wife had some framed poetry that would make wonderful gifts. Unfortunately, my bank account will not allow such purchases at this time, so hence the bookmarks. The fifth one showing the back is the one I bought for my Secret Pal 8. Sorry, but no peeking! 🙂

We did see our friends on the Gaspee Days Committee, and after finding out that one of them will be Presiding over everything next year, I promised them that I will try to participate as much as possible. Rich and I then walked into the games and food area where he bought a New England frozen lemonade while I bought my standard staple, Kettle Corn. If you like sweet and salty foods, Kettle Corn will definitely feed that craving! This particular booth is actually based in Boston’s Fanueil Hall, so visit them if you can.

The last booth we visited was one I knew I would fall in love with. Joy Brown does absolute MAGIC with her camera. She has these incredible photographs taken around New England, particularly Rhode Island. Her specialty seems to be portraits, but this one photograph of a mother goose huddled with her 9 gooslings inside her wings is breath-taking (not on her site, sorry). And good news, she has great photographs on her website too!

After the fair, Rich dropped me off at the Warwick location Yarns at Lace Wings, so I could pick up some US2 Addis that Mary was kind enough to have sent to the store. While there, I finally met Angela who wrote the blog I discovered back in April. We had a great chat, and after she showed me the petal bib she knitted up in Debbie Bliss Cotton Denim from the book, One Skein, I just HAD to get that book! Count another obsession being fed: books and cute baby patterns.

Lastly, besides visiting the grocery store, we bought a few items at the Christmas Tree Shoppe. For those unfamiliar with this place, there is NOTHING even related to Christmas in this store. Instead there is a ton of lower-priced (okay, CHEAP) goods for sale. We found some neat kitchen linens and curtains, but decided to wait until we paint the walls and revamp the kitchen counters first. However, we could not pass up the pink (have never found these except in Virginia) Bigelow English Breakfast (no, not the blue boxes of Teatime) tea boxes, and scooped out whatever we found — 5 boxes. Ahhhh, another obsession appeased. To quote Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, “Obsession is normal.” I really showed it this weekend! Now, to link the final decision on my Amazing Lace Partner… =:8