Capitalism - Feudalism without the Kings

Knitting Friday - on which I shopped for Thanksgiving and other adventures

Wegmann's down by me in the Princeton area has a turkey breast in honey brine, priced at more than a third higher than any other similar brined turkey breast in the area. I looked at it. It was $24+ for a piece which would only serve 5 so I was looking at close to $40. Not very promising.

Then we went to Sam's Club for shopping and their annual Holiday Tasting. However, it was their annual Holiday "What a Bunch of Crap" Tasting. I wish I had had a camera to snap the size of the cheese cubes offered. They were the size of the pieces I sweep from the table as crumbs. Really, the toothpick dwarfed the cube. And this was not "Oh, we're letting you taste our expensive stuff" cheese. Not this was the slightly more than $5 Irish cheddar, which today unfortunately could be classed with your cheap cheeses.

Then you had to listen to a spiel about the mini-quiches before she cut the damn things in half and handed it to you on a small plastic plate which was still 1000 times larger than the quiche piece.

I did get half a cup of coffee, about 7 cran-raisins and they were starting to prepare a cold burrito roll-up which I think was supposed to feature - wait for it - ranch dressing.

Did you notice that I'm still grumpy from this experience? They sent me a damn e-mail inviting me to this festive gala no less! Well, they really sent me two e-mails. It was supposed to run from 11 am to 4 pm and we got there after 12. We did get to see a lot of the backs of microwaves on food stations - just the microwaves, no attendants.

However, it an Annie Hall moment (remember when Allen is arguing about Marshall McLuhan with a professor who taught him and Allen is able to bring in the real McLuhan [who was just standing behind a poster] to refute the other guy?) for me when I spied the store manager.

Now, for those who don't know Sam's Club, you never see a management type in that store. If they're there, they're wearing HP's Invisibility Cloak.

But there he was, walking right towards me as I was waiting at check-out. I was very polite but firmly told him his party sucked. His feeble excuse was that it was a staggered party and more food ("more food"? - read that as any food worth the schlep to the store) would come out later. At which point I told him: Fine, but you could have put that in the damn e-mails.

Now, I know you are all on the edge of your seats with this burning question: How did you know this person was the manager?

Because, good people, I always look at his picture posted on the wall as you pass security on the way out. So my days of post office wanted posters perusing finally paid off.

I did buy a 10 pound Perdue turkey breast at Sam's with only 3% of juices added for moisture so I'd consider my trek successful albeit disappointingly hunger-filled.

Here's my latest top-down top. It's cotton with a simple pattern of a seed stitch collar and hem and a body of 8 rows of stockinette followed by one row of *YO, K2tog.* (I do about 6" before I bind off 30 stitches loosely for the each arm and then cast on 10 stitches for each underarm.

You can see that the top has hues of purple and that the tee is light purple. I've had that Land's End purple tee for a while and finally I found a match. The beads are funky with red, green and purple. I think it all works.

I'm coming close to my 20th top-down top. Talk about being addicted to a pattern! But it is a very fast knit.

Next week, I'll show you my Super Mario pillow. Mitered squares are sooooo slow but I think it's looking quite spiffy!

Happy knitting.