Trenchwork

Well, so much for keeping in touch from the road!

I’m back, albeit more than a little jet lagged, so you’ll have to take this post as you can get it (and I’ll cross my fingers that it makes at least some sense).  However, I have plenty of material, so I’m going to be greedy and dole it out slowly over the next week or two.  For today, though, more than anything I just want to reassure folks that I’m alive, and that I haven’t fallen off the planet or gotten permanently lost in the west’s open landscape.  (Seriously, do you KNOW how many places there are out there where running out of gas would mean at least a day’s walk, or a half day to find cell phone coverage?)

It WAS good to be there, and to spend time with family and friends. To sit and visit, to chat about nothing and everything, under no pressure to cover the news or try and download all the latest into a single conversation before you have to leave. I miss them more than I can say.

It was good to be back among the familiar, even when there were changes. To see election information and campaign interviews as they happened rather than filtered through European interests and perspectives, recognizing where medias on both sides of the pond have their own biases and slants. To drive an automatic, to turn right on red, have decent sized parking spaces, to find street signs and addresses clearly marked. To groan about Florida/Georgia humidity and be thankful for air conditioning. To go to church and celebrate in one’s own language in a place and among a people which actually celebrate. To have Mom’s cheesecake. To have access to department stores which carry sizes larger than a 9 and colors other than black. To linger over a Mexican or Tex-Mex meal, and to have 24-hour access to a WalMart which happens to carry one’s preferred antacid afterward.

And doggone it, it was a real downer to have to settle for a Norwegian grocery yesterday after having spent 6 weeks around full-sized American groceries. If you’re wondering about the difference, think of the larger Mom & Pop stores. The ones with 4 brands of ice cream, only 1 or 2 of which come in gallon boxes, and of those in only 3 flavors (krokan, tri, and vanilla). Where they have 6 types of cereal not counting musli, 4 types of canned fruits (pears, peaches, pineapple, and coctail), and not many more types of canned veggies (corn, beans in tomato sauce or red beans, tomatoes, sometimes peas and sometimes green beans).

It’s a joy to walk into a well-organized Publix or Winn-Dixie, to shake your head at your own excitement at finding true sausages rather than oversized hot dogs, Pop Tarts, a real selection of fruits and veggies, more than three types of pasta, and a proper broom. To laugh when you realize that the family member who came with you has decided to not only walk 20 paces behind, but in the next aisle as you ooh and ah over new products and old “friends,” and while you possessively clutch that box of ordinary saltine crackers.

It’s amazing what you miss, and how touched you find yourself when you can pick up a box of Grape Nuts or walk into an office supply store and find not only the labels you need but a thousand versions to suit any need. Or how grateful you feel yourself when you walk through the doors of a large hardware store and have the desk clerk smile, ask if you’re having a good day, and offer to help you find whatever it is you came in for—within 5 seconds of your arrival—then follow through to do exactly that or summon help if she doesn’t have the answers, all with a cheerful can-do attitude.

There are, of course, some negatives along the way. Such as when a fiber order from a vendor never arrives (is never truly sent) and the vendor refuses to answer the phone or reply to your messages (voice and e-mail) and you have to resort to filing a grievance to retrieve your payment. That kind of unprofessionalism is simply unacceptable, and I don’t care whether it’s a small family business or not. While the brick and mortar store is probably more honest because it requires no initiative from the owner, I’ll never again try to purchase anything from that shop or individual, either online or otherwise, and I’ll never never never recommend them to someone else. Nor do I object to telling you who it was in the hope that the vendor will straighten up, although I fear that their reputation is sunk with more than just me. My feeling is that Little Barn should never operate an online shop . . . or perhaps that they should hire an honest and reputable individual to manage it independently of the owner. It’s a shame, because the prices are good, and I truly loathe reporting a bad experience with a vendor. They’re the kinds of things which give your faith in the inherent good in people a bit of a shake.

Then there are the ones you order raw wool from and who fall off the planet after you’ve sent your payment, and from whom you cannot get a response. The CVM was that way, and I’d given it up for fraud and lost, but was thankful I’d only paid for a pound plus postage. Then, six months later, the fiber arrives. Unexpected, and out of the blue. I don’t know whether the individual had a bout of conscience, if someone else found out and applied pressure, or quite what happened. There was no note, and no explanation. Just a very generous pound of wool. These are the ones which, while you’re still a bit cynical, begin to restore your faith in humanity.

And then there are the pure goods. Like getting an unexpected fibery gift of roving from Margaret (who seemed to be under the silly illusion that I just didn’t have enough but I know it was really because she was trying to dig herself out of fleece that had all come back from the mill ). And meeting Donna, who is as genuine and sweet as she seems on her blog, and who brought me some Loopy Ewe mini-batts because she feared I’d be overwhelmed with just raw fleece. And Kate Lowder who nudged a fleece vendor into shipping an order, and then went above and beyond the call to find me a reputable BFL vendor (which turned out to be Robina Koenig of Tumble Creek Farm and her champion ewe from Black Sheep Gathering, and whose fleece had been washed on the animal before she was shown—which meant that it was incredibly clean when I got it). Seriously, I cannot say enough positive about Kate, and I recommend her to anyone and without reservation.

There were the two anonymous gents at the Metcalf Wood Industries who reassured me that I wasn’t as lost as I thought I was and pointed me in the right direction.

There was Laura Steere of Infinity Acres who found me the luscious fleece from this little Huacaya Alpacca sweetie:

. . . and then promply went out and, in 100-degree heat and impossible humidity–sheared the silky white ringleted fleece of a Suri Llama when I asked if she had a pound she could spare and bouyed my niece and I up with glasses of cold water. How nice could you be?? And heck yes I took the whole fleece!

There was Tony in the produce section of the Winn-Dixie on Magnolia and Park in Tallahassee. A tall, clear-sighted fellow who was intrigued by my desire for onion skins and who talked to me about it and his time in the professional basketball leagues in Europe for a good 15 minutes. He even offered to save the skins for me.

There are people you meet and for whom you automatically wish not just well, but best.

Then there was the fellow at the Woolery who replaced the Little Barn order, and had it in my hands in 2 days flat. The fibery vendors who followed through, like Vicki at Kendig Cottage and Terry of Bizyhands on Etsy who sold me her gently-used Victoria and threw in a lovely hand-dyed roving so that I would have something to practice with.

I truly do believe that people are generally inherently good, but after a couple of negative experiences, it’s awfully nice to find the folks who prove the rule rather than the exception.