There’s nothing like finishing a wool sweater as Spring/Summer approaches. Sigh. However, the sense of accomplishment is still HUGE. The pattern for this wonderful sweater is here at Knitty.com.

Retrospective notes about this sweater? I made it a little big, thinking I’d wear it more like a coat. I would have made the sleeves a little shorter, remembered to put in bust darts, and I would have experimented with the collar – perhaps instead of the shawl collar, a polo-esque collar that would have fallen a bit lower & spread out more across the sweater, but that’s just me thinkin’ after the fact. Not that it’s too late to re-do that part, if I decide to – but right now I’m content to be DONE.

Overall, it’s going to be a warm, cozy sweater that fits, has unmatched style, and is a major knitting accomplishment for me. A friend from the guild looked at my sweater & immediately said she’d never wear all those flowers around her neck, and of course I replied, “Good thing I didn’t make this for you, then!”

I’ve never lacked chutzpah, despite not being Jewish – and it’s probably why I wanted to make this sweater in the first place. So I present, the Folly Fotos:

Here I am, in front of the Yarn Shop, modeling my FINISHED FOLLY! I made it out of Peruvian Highland Wool, from elann.com. I finished this Saturday night & brought it over to model, despite the non-chilly weather. 

And I look so squinty and awkward because it is EIGHTY DEGREES and bright sunshine. Hello, Summer. Meet Folly! Folly, Say Goodbye! 

Closeup of sleeve ruffle & flower button; more flowers. 

Dogs do not understand TV. They hear a doorbell, a phone ring, or – god help us – a dog barking, and it’s all HERE AND NOW by Lionel Ritchie and we are in the MOMENT and we are REACTING and there is turf that needs defending. I had the misfortune of having the television on as background noise while I was on the computer last night, and “Cradle 2 the Grave” was on, high-quality stuff, folks. DMX, Jet Li & Tom Arnold, seriously – how could one go wrong? Anyway, I’m really not watching it because we tried to watch it before and couldn’t – and that makes it good background tv, I don’t even feel compelled to watch, really. But heaven help us all, there’s some scene with some pissed-off Dobermans, and that got Suzy & Polly ALL kinds of riled up. Heads up, ears up, alarm barking/burfing, respectively. I kept saying “TEE VEE” “IT’S OK” to them but they don’t know what the hell TEE VEE is, they just know they’re hearing dogs barking and it sounds like something we need to be worried about! We were on Orange Alert for half an hour as a result. Plus, when James is gone, I think Suzy gets more protective. Or else that’s wishful thinking on my part, but she does have that guard dog in her.

This morning, I thought I was getting up at the Crack of Dawn, only to be disillusioned by the cable box, which is smart enough to understand Daylight Savings Time. Anyway, I let the dogs out the back, they did their thang, and then we went back through the house to the front door & I let Polly out to get the paper. Polly, as a lab, loves to retrieve, almost more so than Suzy. She’s more competitive, I think. (Hm. Where’d she learn THAT?) She Love Love LOVES to get the paper in the morning. So off she went. Suddenly, Suzy broke & ran out to try to get the paper as well, because the Sunday paper is big, and it’s harder for li’l P to get it in her mouth. We had a Retriever Standoff over the paper, and it’s hard to command authority when you’re laughing as hard as I was. Suzy wouldn’t come, Polly was lookin’ all Rhodesian Ridgeback, with her ruff up from her neck to her butt, and then? Suzy trotted off! Polly won! I was amazed.

The funniest thing we’ve had Polly retrieve have been the plastic pots that blew away from the side of the garage all over the front yard. They’re easy to pick up – but they obstruct her vision once they’re in her mouth. So she does this drunken-weave dance as she comes back to you, trying to see where she’s going, bobbing her head all over the place and from side to side. It doesn’t quite make sense in her brain, that as long as she has it firmly in her mouth, no matter where she moves her head, she still will have a big round blind spot – but the desire to bring it back is far stronger than the disconnect, and she does it with such enthusiasm, it’s touching and hilarious all at once.

On the non-dog front: My cold’s getting a little better – god, I would love to have this week off as well, but I’m also really charged up about starting my new job. A little knitting tease – there’s a finished sweater in the House o’ Jen! I’m so glad it’s done. I can’t say I love it to the moon at this point, but it’s still pretty fun & it will probably look better if I put it on over real clothes, and not pajamas. Yes, I’m talking about the FOLLY. I will get a picture up in the next day or two – because I think I might be the first person in the universe besides the designer, to actually finish this sweater. I’m gonna act like I am, anyway. This calls for a tiara! And I’m still planning on wearing this sweater, even if it’s just in Abbey’s basement with the a/c on full blast – Kim’s gonna wear her wool sweater, and Abbey will wear her wool Einstein, and we’ll pretend it’s December and snowing outside. Delusions and grandeur go together like pie & ice cream! Mmmmm. pie.

Take care, I-peeps. :)

AFTER all – and didn’t you want THAT particular earworm to haunt you, all weekend long? Don’t worry. Just whistle that song from the Scorpions and you’ll be ok.

I went in to my new employer yesterday, and apparently they wouldn’t let anyone have a beer before I got there. So my arrival was extremely welcomed, through bribery & alcohol. No problem there! And everyone was SO CHEERFUL. People came streaming up and saying how excited they were and welcoming me, I almost caught myself looking over my shoulder. Surely you are confusing me with someone far more interesting just behind me? And are these people really happy? Really? Fo’ Real? It hit me after I left, what I’ve stumbled away from and while it wasn’t healthy or productive or positive, it felt SAFE. Sort of like learning to sleep on a bed of nails, I guess, you feel strange if you’re not being steadily prodded by sharp points, once you’re used to it. Anyway. When I first got there, and rounded the corner – there was my friend Sean. SEAN! Hey! (Not to be confused with BatKiller Shawn. He’s out of state & out of touch.) Sean used to work with me, and right at the time I was going through my shake up/fall from grace, Sean started a group that met at lunch and worked on drawing your life/basically exploring your own goals and realizing your dreams, whether they are personal or professional. You can see his self-published book here. If you live in KC, I can save you shipping. :) Because Sean works with me, again! It was just great to see a familiar face, and took some of my own nervousness away, meeting all sorts of new people & knowing I’d never remember their names. I also have a wicked head cold, which made evvvvvverything a little muffled, like wrapping a drum in a towel. Because of course, as I have a few days off & I start to relax, that means the bugs & nasties aren’t held at bay anymore & they have seized the opportunity to pounce.

I’m grateful and excited and a smidge nervous. (“Coffee makes me a might nervous when I drink it, mmmhmmmmm.”) I used to move, and change jobs, what felt like all the time. I got out of the habit, and now I have to go through the learning process again, re-mold, adapt, remember that some of it is new again & my new job will have loads more “goin’ on”. Hell, I never completely mastered the phones at my last job! (They were straight out of 1984. Orwell himself wouldn’t have bothered, either.) So here’s to a new chapter in the Book O’ Jen. I have no idea how many pages there will be, or how dramatically it will read, but I’m looking forward to living it.

First, a happy b’day shout to Becky in Hawaii, and my knittin’ bud Carol in St.Louis, even though I don’t think she reads my blog. Just in case. What an awesome day to have as a birthday! Also, I installed haloscan for commenting. For now. I still threaten to go to typepad & if I figure out how to transfer all my blogger files, I still may do it. Blasted Blogger. Again, I digress.

I love jokes and pranks, especially the elaborate ones. However, having concocted a number of them myself, I’ll admit: it makes you paranoid. For instance, I’m going in to my new place of employment today for a meet-n-greet (they’re apparently gonna be drinking beer, so it’s not exactly formal), and I have this teensy-weensy-back-of-the-brain fear that the entire job offer is gonna be one big prank. Probably because that whole process happened so fast – I’ve never sent in a resume, been called to interview immediately, interviewed, and had an offer from start to finish in 10 days. And probably because I’m F-ING PARANOID. My last job did a number on me, with the feeling of having to cover one’s ass CONSTANTLY to justify any minor twitch or bump. So not how to live, but it also evolved over time, because I was a “star” when I started, one of the golden children – but I had no clue! I just thought everything was awesome blossom, and I had come from the job with the crazy pantyhose lady. Hell, at that time, Leona Helmsley woulda seemed like a sharp, astute, somewhat demanding, yes, but a great boss, comparatively. But as I would learn, every star has its fall, sadly, and when I fell, another rose, and I couldn’t believe it was true, but in time, her star also fell. Sigh. No sense in belaboring that cycle – I’m out!

So, my friends, I will give you one of the greatest pranks I’ve ever pulled. It was at the former employer, and my god, did it blow up in my face, and everyone else who helped pull it off. But DAMN it was funny. And to his credit, the president/owner of the company thought it was HILA-rious & later said that if people didn’t like the joke, then fuck ’em. Direct quote.

The Elaborate Parking Space Prank.
Background: Corporate office building, 16 stories tall. Parking garage (free parking), three stories underground, three stories above ground. Spaces are not universally painted, so some are narrow, some are wide. People tend to park in the same spots, perhaps it’s the territorial-nature of human beings, perhaps it’s just habit. Multiple businesses in building, our company was the largest single entity.

I was on a committee that worked primarily on public relations/events. We also wanted to liven up things around the joint. One afternoon, we brainstormed & came up with the April Fool’s joke, to convince everyone that we were moving to assigned parking spaces, and to make everyone go through some silly ritual to get their space. At first, we were going to hire a guy to come in with a clipboard, and have people park in the space they wanted with their blinkers on, to wait for the clipboard guy to note their license plate. What we finally arrived at, was to have people park in the space they wanted, put their business card under their wiper blade, and it would be collected & noted by 10 a.m.

We went for convincing. Really, it’s my specialty. Make it so real, employ others with authority, and all you have to do is sit back and wait for the bite. We had the building manager & our director of operations in on it. A voicemail and email went out to the agency, telling people that the spaces were going to be repainted over the upcoming weekend, and spaces would be numbered. As the largest tenant in the building, we were given first shot at choosing the space we wanted. You had to have your car parked in the spot you wanted by 9:15 the next morning (April 1). This announcement went out around 2 in the afternoon, March 31.

One hour later, the joint was ON FIRE. The creative department had started a petition against this new policy, stating that assigned parking restricted them too much, they wanted their GOD GIVEN FREEDOM to park wherever they wanted given the weather and how they felt. (Let’s be honest: that department never got to work on time, and they were pissed about having to get in that early.) People were moving their cars that afternoon, to leave them overnight – getting rides home with other people. People who’d worked there a long time were pissed because they had always wanted reserved spots & now it was a free-for-all and some pipsqueak who hadn’t put in their time might end up with a better spot than them. HR and Operations were getting deluged, and thankfully, our operations person had left for the day. It was melee. Over a PARKING SPACE. Shortly before 5 that same day, we pulled the plug – but it was too late for some people, having left early, etc., so they arrived the next day, put their cards on their windshields & came in to discover that it was all a big hoax. One manager made a huge deal about how one of her employees came in early that day, leaving her DYING MOTHER’S BEDSIDE so she could get the parking spot. Some people are STILL mad about it, 3 years later.

I can only say this. If a parking spot takes priority over your dying mother? Then things are seriously wrong. Bewildered by the abject anger and fury that boiled out over this, I was talking to a girlfriend who used to work with me. She pointed out that, in an environment that is run by so much favoritism, we’d given people the opportunity to compete on a level playing field. Everyone had an equal shot at getting the parking space they wanted, and it hit nerves like crazy. I just kept shaking my head & saying, “But – But – it’s just a f-ing PARKING space!” She countered, “It doesn’t matter. They saw a chance to jockey for position and they had to take it.”

Double sigh. I have no pranks planned for the day, partly because I’ve got a cold & feel dragged down. Partly because I’ve played so many in my life, and some really got people wound up, beyond my wildest predictions (case in point!) My husband already got me this morning, by installing some sorta “mouse droppings” thing so every time I moved my cursor I got a black rectangle that appeared on my screen. Honestly, I thought I needed to re-boot, that my memory was getting low & the computer was acting up. He called an hour ago and told me how to fix it – it was harmless, I laughed, he laughed – nobody got hurt. The point is to laugh. Laughing is good for you. If you have so much anger and fear inside of you, that you can’t laugh? Then I suggest a good therapist or a job change, or something significant to get rid of that negativity. I’d love to know about other people’s pranks, too. Give me some ideas for next year…… :)

Today is my day on Self Portrait Day, and I had to laugh at myself, because I just CAN’T answer the questions succinctly, apparently. Hi Jennifer, where do you live? OH blather blather blather and did I tell you about the time I got caught chewing gum back in Iowa and about the wild dogs? And about my body gnomes?

I think it’s fitting that, on self portrait day, I am laughing at myself. I was branded a Social Butterfly at the age of 9, and it’s never stopped. I love people, meeting new people, talking to strangers while we wait in line, making tiny connections with the world, because even though there are idiots and jerks and bad drivers (GOD there are bad drivers) out there, there are amazing human beings who also wanna say “hi” and who care about each other, whether it’s in line at the grocery store or across the miles via a computer. Everyone has a story & they just want, to quote John Prine, someone to say, “Hello in there……”

Cheers to all of you, because as long as there’s more of us than them, the world will be a better place.

I’m exceptionally light-hearted this week, gosh, wonder why? I am hesitant still to even blog about my Former Employer, because it feels a little too dirty-laundry-ish and would certainly seem like I was exiting with poor sportsmanship. So I thought I’d blog about an OLD boss I had, and in fact was the absolute CRAZIEST boss I ever did have, with perhaps the exception of the woman I worked for in college, who was agoraphobic and never left her home and basically I went through her mail, with her on the phone, sorted it for her, and had what she wanted to read delivered to her house. She was in charge of selecting films and such for the campus, so I also made the posters for the films. It was really quite an easy job, she just lived in denial and would talk about going out and playing tennis and whatnot, even though she hadn’t left her home & had all the windows covered in plastic, for years. So, she was just sort of mentally ill.

But my SuperCaliFragiCrazy boss, let’s call her “Jodi”, was WONKERS. Good god, the stories. She had her own agency. She actually wanted to be a movie star. She spent money like one, that’s for sure. Gosh, I hardly know where to begin and end with the stories. When I interviewed, she was nice as pie. She even wanted to compensate me with a CAR. A Lincoln Navigator. Hello, that is too big for me. I would have to get a running start to even make it into the front seat. I declined, preferring cold hard cash to a giant tax and gas burden. Anyway. She wanted to be big and important and glamorous. She was intensely paranoid, and had every single piece of email route through her computer, incoming & outgoing. She rifled through offices at night. Her apartment was above the agency, and she would listen in on the phones, thinking we didn’t know. One night, five of us had worked late & we decided to all go out and grab dinner. We headed to the 39th street area, planning on going to a cheap burger place over there. Jodi tagged along. We discovered said burger joint was closed, and as we did that sort of aimless-milling on the sidewalk trying to determine where to go next, Jodi commanded, “Follow me.” We dutifully did, and ended up at the now-defuct Cafe Allegro, one of two four-star restaurants in Kansas City. Now, the dinner that we had? This was how she entertained clients, and there wasn’t a client at the table. For seven people, our bill was thousands of dollars. Yes, you read that correctly. Like $2,500 plus tip. Are you staggering? We didn’t because we’d had so much to eat & drink it was a blur. What did we drink, twenty dollar bills blended with vodka? Yes, this will be the only time in my life that I’ve had wine that cost FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS A BOTTLE. And she ordered two bottles. Her style was to order one of everything and if someone liked it, order two more. Keep in mind this woman eventually went bankrupt, and fled the state, with a million-$-plus lawsuit against her for unpaid accounts. You see where the money was going? I have so so many stories about her, and I only worked there four months. The breaking point for me was when she called me in to the conference room to scream at me over something stupid. Ordinarily, I am a pleaser. I want approval. I need it, I’ve always needed it, and have been learning the necessary lesson of getting it from myself, not others, as I grow up. At this time I was still a lot more over on the “must please” side of things, but when she started screaming at me, in front of two other people she’d just finished screaming at, all I could see were the ugly lines around her mouth and how unattractive she looked while she was yelling at me. And while she continued with the SHOUT SHOUT SHOUTING I was off in a corner of my brain, conferring with my gnomes, and we all agreed that I was so out of there as soon as I could get another job.

But the funniest, craziest, most insane story was this: She had a business assistant and a personal assistant, because she was a movie star, at least in her own mind, not an advertising executive. Then one of them quit. I was already gone when this took place. She was upstairs in her apartment, getting dressed, and she couldn’t get her pantyhose on. Now, Jodi was a large woman, and as a large person myself, and most women in general will, too, I can attest to the fact that pantyhose are a pain in the butt. However, Jodi, living in her little fantasy dream world, wouldn’t buy the correct SIZE of pantyhose for her body, but a much smaller size. And thus, she couldn’t get them on. So she called both her assistant, and the assistant media planner up to her apartment to PUT HER PANTYHOSE ON HER. When her assistant told her, after hoisting and pulling & tugging and being way too close to her boss’ skin and underwear and things one never needs to see or know, that they weren’t going to fit, Jodi commenced with the screaming about how she KNOWS her size and she ALWAYS buys this size and they should just TRY HARDER. It became an ongoing joke with our group of friends – what would your annual salary have to be, to put pantyhose on your boss? And no playing the “well if my boss was Cindy Crawford” game, we’re talking your boss is Roseanne Barr before all the surgery and weight loss and ten times meaner. She finally screamed at the two assistants to leave and she found something else to wear.

As I prepare for my new job next week, I would like to go on the record to say that I will never. Ever. ask anyone to put my pantyhose on me. EVER. Because that, my friends, falls under the header of “things a boss should never do”.

I Quit My Job. That was the BIG news for today, in the World o’ Jen. Boy-o-boy chef boy-ar-dee, did it feel good to resign. I’ve got a job at another agency, as their media director, and it’s a much smaller place, with loads of opportunity. There will be loads of work, but hey, I’m used to loads of work, so why not get paid well and have more freedom and support at the same time? In any event, it was time for me to go. I start a week from today, so I’m going to try to enjoy a few days off, get some stuff done around the house, help my friend Mike with some committment-ceremony stuff, and in general try to rebuild some of my self that has eroded and pickled in my anger and resentments over the past couple of years. Can’t be done in a week, I know, but at least I’m aware it’s a rebuilding process. Thanks, BloggerBuds, for your well-wishes & positive thoughts on my behalf, because it worked!

WOw, I had no clue how bright that sunshine stuff was. I spent most of the day squinting & tilting my head, what with all the LIGHT, bright glorious light everywhere.

After Sunday Brunch with good friends, we had a big date trip to Lowe’s. All garden stuff, ka-ching! ka-ching! I am always amazed how much stuff adds up – but it was nice, we got a couple of cool iron trellis-y things, one for the rose by James’ workshop, and an obelisk thingy for the whiskey barrel planter, that will hopefully be covered with sweet peas in a month or two. I also got a bunch of bulbs for one part of the side yard, and we got wood to make a sign for the perennial bed out front, a sign that indicates our house address, plus a big “E”, because without fail, people will go to the West version of our address, and remain confused. My job is to paint the numbers/letter & backdrop board as well as come up with something decorative to draw on wood that will go above the sign – fun practice for James & his new scroll saw (from last week’s auction – easier to care for than a PUPPY.)

On the Folly update, I’m on the shoulder shaping for the sleeves. Whew. I swear, when this sweater is finished, I don’t care if it’s the middle of June, I’m cranking up the A/C and wearing the damn thing!!!!

Monday, Monday, fast approaching. Should be an interesting week!