Rest, I can has it?

Thursday was a lot of running around. The store did great, the teachers are all coming in and getting their stuff for back to school, and Mom was in town. Granted, her car was in a local shop getting repaired (catalytic converter decided to quit), but it’s a decent mechanic and everything looked to be done on time for her to leave on Friday. We even went out for a nice supper that night, along with Jared. Yey free food! The downside was that the raid was frustrating on Thursday night, but that happens sometimes. There were a few too many odd things happening by the end, so on our last attempt at Malygos, when we made it to phase 3, landed on the red dragons, then had them vanish under us, land on another set of dragons which proceeded to vanish even faster than the first set, letting us all plummet to our deaths… yeah we called it a night. Too much weird stuff.

It’s a good thing I went to bed early tho. I needed the rest. Turns out Friday, with all the running around I had to do, plus the store being swamped by returning teachers, meant that I was drained by the end of the day. By the end of the day, Mom had gotten home, Jared had gone to the eye docs again and gotten his new computer, and the store had it’s best single day ever since we opened just over a year ago. I’m still in shock over it, but thrilled. And to add to the happy, my friend Anne finally got the box of knitted goodies I’d sent to her earlier in the week, so now I can share pictures!

I’d made for her a shawl and some fingerless mitts from patterns found on Ravelry, a lovely online community of knitters, crocheters, spinners, and dyers that has a wealth of information. So since Anne whimpered that no one ever sends her knitted goodies, I rummaged on Ravelry and found some patterns for some things I thought she might like.

First up was a pair of fingerless mitts. On Ravelry, they’re called “Nalu Mitts“, since “nalu” means “wave” in Hawaiian. Me, I never can remember that, but I remember “wave” in Japanese is “nami”, so I keep calling them the “Nami Mitts”. Hey, it’s my brain, work with me here! I’d made a pair of them in blue and love them. They were perfect for working on the computer when you’re just a bit cold but still want to feel to type. Since Anne gets a sea breeze where she lives which can get a bit nippy sometimes, I asked her to pick a color from a range I gave her. She picked “spring green”. To me, the yarn is a spring green. She swears, now that she’s seen it, it’s moss green. All I know is she loves the gloves, thus, I’m happy.

The other item I knitted was something called a Sunday Market Shawl. This one came about because Anne saw a ball of Noro yarn on my Flickr page, showing the various colors in the ball. She drooled on it, said I needed to knit her something with that yarn, and I eyed the one green mitt I’d already done. But since the pattern for the shawl said it was great for those evenings when there’s a light nip to the air but you don’t want to wear a full jacket, hey, I’ll knit that instead! And in the yarn she’s drooling on! Awesome! It was an easy enough knit, and once again, she loved it. It was amusing when she called to say she had the box, cos she was under orders to not open it til she called me. Once I gave her permission, she chatted away as she opened it, then nothing but “Oooo!!!!!” for the next two minutes. I finally looked at Jared, who was with me at that point, and grinned. “I think she likes them. I think I broke her.” She finally said something coherant at that point, and we got on with the talking. ::grin::

So yeah, Friday was good. Saturday? Eh. We cleaned up the mess at the store, putting everything to rights again, and tried to figure out what all I have to reorder today to have back in stock for the next wave of teachers. As the day went on, the headache got worse, and the tummy decided it had had quite enough tyvm, so I had to back out of raiding that night to go to bed early and try to not be sick. Sunday was grocery shopping, laundry, and me baking two batches of bagels: one for me, and one for friends next to the store. This morning when I dropped the bagels off, they cheered and were petting them, last I saw.

I’m hoping this week will be as busy as last week was. It’s making me feel better, and not quite as worried as I was back in the June lull. We’ve got one year under our belts now, and people are beginning to rely on us for their art and teacher needs. Now if I could only get more book shoppers in! (Darn you, Books-a-Million!) This weekend I have off, and I might end up face down in the bed for most of it if this week’s anything like last week. Whee!

Oh dear… I still have to look at orders for the community college kids and art supplies! Gah! /flail