yarn stash | 365 Days Handmade

Remember when I got called to jury duty and then was ordered by the judge to return the following week?

So, even though the case ended up being dismissed, I guess that extra day that I showed up was considered jury service. I didn’t get the $15 a day that the county pays for compensation, because I’m a state employee (and well, because state employees receive paid Jury Leave). I did, however, receive reimbursement for mileage. I was pleasantly surprised to open the envelope from the county Superior Court to find money and not a subpoena. It was a nice fat check payable to me for the amount of a whopping two dollars and thirty-eight cents. Whoopee! It was burning such a hole in my pocket that naturally I had to go out and spend it all.

I went to one of my favorite local independent fabric and yarn shops, where they were having a big sale on yarn. It wasn’t until I got my haul home that I noticed my chosen fibers all had something in common. Today, for some reason, I guess I must have been drawn to the color green.

Today was one of those days in prison where alarms kept going off in various yards, and it was one code after another. We had a serious code on our yard that involved two inmates battering a third one. The C.O. up in the guard tower fired off a round to make them stop. In the meantime, the rest of the inmates on the yard were ordered over the PA system to prone out (get down on their stomachs), and luckily they all cooperated. At other institutions with more serious gang action, this sort of incident could quickly escalate into a riot: A fourth guy sees his homie getting beat up by two guys, so he runs in to help, and then a fifth guy does the same, and so on, and so forth, and then the next thing they all see is custody coming at them with batons and pepper spray and OC bombs.

Last week in my Lifers Support Group, one inmate was remembering how Jason from the movie Friday the 13^th scared him when he was little. This led to a conversation about things that they were afraid of when they were kids, and then the topic shifted to people deliberately getting their thrills by riding on roller coasters, going bungee jumping, skydiving.

“What about you, Doc?” one of them said. “What do you think?”

“I think I wouldn’t pay good money to do any of that,” I said. “I get my adrenaline rush for free, working in a prison.”

On a separate note: It’s finally the start of my three-day weekend. Every night this week I’d been knitting a few rows on the sweater, but now I have to admit that I’m getting a little bored with it. I’m thinking of starting another pair of socks. Here is just a portion of my sock yarn stash. I can’t decide which one to choose. Suggestions?