Nuts To You

Since when did it become dangerous to eat peanuts in public?

Headline: Childless Blogger Shocked By Ridiculous Rules
It all started with a call to a chocolatier in Highland Park, NJ. Years ago, I used to go to their factory outlet store and buy defective truffles for half the price of perfect truffles (most of the "defective" ones couldn't be distingquished from the perfect ones by mere mortals). I also used to buy "Peanut Butter Smoothies" there...a small egg-shaped dollop of the softest, smoothest, sweetest, melt-in-your-mouth, peanut butter concoction, covered in their fine chocolate. Think Reese's Peanut Butter Cups made in heaven.

Since I haven't bought these celestial delights in over 15 years, I though I'd call and find out if they still made them. I was told that the factory no longer makes any peanut butter products.

Chatting with a co-worker, she suggested that they may have decided to discontinue peanut butter products so they wouldn't have to have two separate manufacturing lines. With all the commotion about peanut allergies, many food manufacturers were opting to eliminate all peanuts to avoid legal exposure. She mentioned that her child's school dictated what students could bring to school for lunch, what food mixes that could use for bake sales and even which chocolate chips could be used in homemade cookies, if the child wanted to be able to bring any into the school.

God forbid her child should waft a cookie, with a Nestle's chocolate chip that might have brushed by a peanut in the Nestle's factory, past a student with a peanut allergy, such that the poor student goes into immediate anaphylactic shock.

Are peanut allergies new? Did I have co-students throughout my schooling that were regularly dying of peanut exposure, and I just didn't know it? Are peanut allergies just more severe than say, wool allergies?

Or have people just gotten extraordinarily ridiculous.

Current Knitting
I've just about doubled the length of the mohair boucle scarf for Charles, but I still have a lot of work to do to get this done by Saturday. Honestly, my biggest fear isn't that I won't have enough time to knit...it's that I will run out of interest in knitting a simple stockinette scarf with a seed stitch border before I get to a decent length.

As nice as the yarn is, the knitting is still kinda boring.

Knitting Meet-Up
I finally got the opportunity to meet up with one of the knitting communities proponents, Fredda Peritz.

We met for lunch yesterday (thanks again for lunch!), which was supposed to have been followed by yarn shopping. We ended up gabbing so much, that I didn't have time to shop for yarn afterwards. What a wonderfully vibrant and down-to-earth person. It was a pleasure getting to know her a little.

Fredda is the creator of The Knitting Vault, where I sell my pattern designs. She and I both agreed that her site is getting better and better as folks continue to contribute their designs. I foresee that one day, searching her site for the perfect sweater, or the perfect shawl, etc. will be an extremely convenient way of locating a knitting pattern. We both also agreed that Lucy Neatby's patterns are some of the most detailed and well-written patterns on The Knitting Vault. Even if you don't want to knit one of her designs, you should buy one of her patterns to see how a knitting pattern should be written.

Lack of Knitting Content
Since I have no photos of knitting or spinning and I don't feel like finding any interesting photos to post using Google, I'll leave you with the one picture I got that show's Franklin's ass.

This if for you Carol...sorry for the quality, it was taken at night.