Tuesday...........

Today was a pretty busy day. I went to Twist to fondle the yarn---oopsie-I MEAN HELP OUT..at least I hope I am helping.

I love being able to play with all the new yarns.

We are trying to watch our spending since the FREAKING high cost of gas is taking a big bite out of the ol' budget. So I am going to try to only buy yarn for projects that I am casting on and working immediately. At this point I have a shop model for The Beadery, a couple socks and a shop model for Twist in various stages of progression..oh, an a completely wonderful sweater out of Rowan Plaid that has been sitting on the needles for too long...so I definitely have a little bit of work in front of me. I am even trying to wait to buy more sock yarn until I have all of the Twist sock of the month and The Beadery's second Saturday socks done....However, I am not even going to pretend I will not falter from time to time. If we get any electric colored sock yarn in, I'm sunk...or any new Baby Alpaca Twist...arggg!!

I went to my pottery class at 2:00 today. Now that I have been working on centering a little more and seem to have conquered that--or at least have made peace with the centering gods--I am really starting to enjoy it. I got 5 pretty good sized bowls thrown today. One of them I was particularly proud of. After setting it on my shelf to dry a bit, I reached for something to the side of it and whacked it. DAMN! I will go to the studio tomorrow to see if I can repair the damage. Eventually I would like to progress to the point where I can churn out a pretty uniform set of bowls for our house and for gifts. I also love hand thrown mugs--big "coffee addict" style--so this is another thing I will work at. I'll try to remember to snap pictures tomorrow when I go for damage control.

My questions for the day are:

1. How much is gas in your area?
It is 3.50 a gallon here in Wichita.

2. Does the high cost of gas affect your lifestyle? If so, what are you doing to offset the high price of gas and keep your budget afloat?
Here at Casa Crazy Life, I am trying to curb my Internet buying clicky finger...especially when it comes to books and other little things. I am cooking more from scratch and staying home more when possible. No more driving around aimlessly. I am trying to get everything I need for food prep at one place or bundling trips.

I would seriously consider taking a bus wherever I needed to go, however the bus does not come to our little town. I can't park and ride since there would be no place to park securely (Grocery store parking is for grocery store customers etc...). Wichita mass transit sucks at this point. It stops running too early, has very limited reach and does not run on Sundays. So as a result, most people who would consider the bus, are not able to do so. So I drive. When I was in Atlanta, I was pretty impressed with the train and bus system. It doesn't run to some of the suburbs, but it does have a pretty comprehensive route. We need that here. I would definitely take the bus to and from Twist on days I'm downtown helping--if that were an option.

This said, I was thinking about how this "recession" we are supposedly in is nothing the U.S. hasn't done before. Anyone remember the gas crisis of the 70's? Humor me if you are too young... The budget crunches now are pretty much the same as we were feeling then. It all runs in cycles. Let's face it, bell bottoms and hip huggers recently came back in, so why should the budget be immune to cycles. Recession, high gas prices are forgivable. HIP HUGGERS AND BELL BOTTOMS ARE NOT.