What Would John Denver Do? (WWJDD)

I recently took a trip to the Denver-Boulder area to visit my friend Kristin. Since she was a kid, she has always loved Colorado. She’s an outdoors kind of girl—loves to camp, kayak and hike. She visited Boulder late last summer, stayed with friends for a couple of weeks, and then made the bold move to pick up and relocate there from Chicago. Two months later, the move was complete. Unfortunately, she spent the first few months with a horror story of a roommate and the woman’s pre-teen son. But what do you expect when you pick someone blindly off of Craigslist? Craigslist is good for sofas, maybe not so good for picking a roommate.

Kristin was fortunate enough to get out of that situation and into a MUCH better one with a new roommate who is a really fantastic young woman. I admire people who have the moxy to pick up and start over like that. Of course, I worry about her because she went there without a job or any steady source of income, but I’m confident that she’ll work that all out eventually.

So, while I was visiting Kristin, I dragged her along (she’s not a knitter) with me to the Showers of Flowers yarn store in Denver. This was the first store that I had ever placed an online order from many years ago, so I wanted to see it in person. After reading some negative reviews about the staff on Knitmap.com, I had some hesitation to visit the store, but I’m a firm believer in forming my own opinion and not just accepting those of others. And boy was I glad I went. It’s a large store with lots of moderately priced yarns and a couple of lines of slightly higher end yarns (though that doesn’t seem to be their niche). They had a decent selection of books, an impressive selection of buttons and a nice staff that was helpful but didn’t hover.

Despite the negative things some had to say about the owner, I found her to be really delightful. I mentioned to her that her store was the first I ever purchased yarn from online and she seemed really pleased. When I told her that I was visiting from Chicago, she asked me about my stay, told me to enjoy my trip and wished me safe travels back home. I don’t know how the other people on Knitmap found her to be some evil person, and I mentioned as much to Kristin who told me an interesting story she'd heard involving a woman (part of a local “mommy mafia” apparently) kicking the owner’s puppy to prevent it from coming at her child. Clearly both parties are at fault here—the woman for not keeping the kid from running wild in the store and the owner for allowing her puppy to be out of its cage. The mother apparently wrote up a scathing article about the owner and the store, to which one of the store’s employees had submitted a rebuttal providing more of the facts on the situation. That kind of action on the mother’s part just bothers me. A woman had a bad experience in which no one was hurt and now she wants to destroy a shop owner's reputation. It’s a shame. Both parties should have apologized for what happened and been done with it.

But enough of that. The rest of my trip was spent in Boulder, and what a beautiful little city that is to visit. We also headed out to Rocky Mountain National Park for a somewhat scary (because of the snowy roads) drive through the mountains, and then headed out the next day to the Eldora Mountain Resort for some snow shoeing. I'm a cold/cool weather lover (except when I'm on the motorcycle), so this really was an ideal vacation for me. It also gave me some time to work on my Chiton pullover. I'll admit, my knitting fever has started to wane over the last couple of weeks. This is a simple project that shouldn’t have taken me more than a week to finish, but it seems that I’m approaching the three week mark here. Oh well, it’s a summer garment I can’t wear here in Chicago for another three months at least. I suppose there’s no real rush to get it done.

Me (in the back) and Kristin at Rocky Mountain National Park