Friday, September 28, 2011 for blog

In Salinas, Ca again for second day. Loaded three stops yesterday but when we got to a scale, we were over weight on trailer axles. It was 37,000 and some change we're only allowed to have 34,000 on those axles. We can carry 80,000 overall, but can only have 34,000 on the very back axles or the trailer axles. Only 34,000 on the middle axles, or the drive axles. And finally we can only have 12,000 on the front axles or the steering axles. If you add them up they come to the 80,000 lbs. Our gross weigh ( over all weight) was under 80,000, I think it was something around 74,000 or 78,000, I didn't look at the scale ticket, and can't remember what hubby said it was, the important part to me was that it wasn't over gross. So, we had to come back from King City to Salinas, to have someone pull some or all the stuff out of the trailer and restack it to redistribute the weight.

I again, had to stop working on the echo flowers shawl. Last week I had to stop because I had left it on the bed while hubby came back to fix something to eat, and didn't realize that my needles were there. He leaned on them or something and he felt really bad when he heard them snap. I told him that I shouldn't have left them where they were... My fault. Yesterday morning Katie (my year old female Dachshund) evidently wanted me to wake up. She had jumped on me a couple times. When she decided that I wasn't going to wake up, she resorted to more stringent tactics. Needless to say the sound of my needles cracking brought me out of bed really fast. She only broke one of the tips, but needless to say, we're broke down in the road, till I can get home and get the ones I ordered to replace last weeks debacle. Knit picks is gonna wonder what in the world I'm doing with all these size 5's. I guess I'd have to tell them I'm using them for "chewy sticks" if they ever asked... This is one reason I don't use terribly expensive needles. I've been known to drop my dpn's down in the seat mechanism (the hinges and stuff underneath the seat that helps keep the truck suspension from beating you to death). When you drop things in there, you either can't retrieve them or they get bent when you take your weight off the seat. Pinched in between the hinges and bent beyond use. (learned that one from personal experience). Who ever bought the last truck we were in, also has a size 1 DPN that the don't know about. That is a good reason to use circular needles on all projects in the truck. At least if you drop one it is "tethered" to the other needle and less likely to be lost or damaged by seat.



Anyway, I've decided that my poor echo flowers shawl has bad Mojo. Or if you've ever seen "Medicine Man" bad Juju. We had a bit of a family issue several weeks ago, and that seemed to be the shawl I worked on when sorting out that mess in my head, I guess it absorbed all the bad thoughts and feelings. Now it won't let me finish it to move on to other projects.



I'm also working on the Wingspan. Thank goodness I had it with me when my Echo went down. I would have gone nuts without something to knit. I'm knitting it out of some Knit Pick's Chroma, I think the color way was Prism. It is really pretty. I may have to make another later and see what some other yarns do with that pattern. I'm not sure I'm going to get all 8 triangles with what I've got, but I think this shawl is a bit like the hitchhiker, you can do as many or few as you like and it will still look good. The Chroma was already in my stash, thought I would have enough to do it, but we'll see.



Please excuse the quality of my pictures. The are taken with my iPod and the light in the truck isn't always optimal.