Honest to god, I have so much more to say.  I must one day soon just throw Caution off my shoulder and write more cohesively.  There's so much wrapped up in all of this.

I didn't go to knitting tonight.

I attended a meeting with Alison, instead, that went kind of long.

She's been meeting with all sorts of people who are helping her in various ways in her quest to buy a coffee shop.

Tonight it was with a guy from the Small Business Development Center who is coaching and guiding her through writing her Business Plan.

She's been working on this for several months.

She laughed tonight when she gave me her big, bent-out-of-shape binder full of stuff -- I might have time to move some things around and help out with the formatting tomorrow -- and told me not to lose anything or throw anything away.

She has every iteration of her Business Plan in there, way back to the very first one -- a couple of sentences on a piece of paper.  Now it's many pages long, is organized, has facts and figures backed up with research, tables, lists, comparisons, an appendix, sources.

I am so proud of her.

The whole idea is a long shot.  A long, long shot at 21 and with two dimes to rub together (on a good day).  And the longer it takes, the longer the shot seems to become in this sucky economy.

Hopefully, things will loosen up some.

Hopefully, her hard work will be taken seriously and will mean something to someone holding purse strings.

Not surprisingly, she's taken much more seriously in any encounter when accompanied by one of her parents.

Hopefully, she will find some measure of encouragement -- tempered by caution.  I dread that she'll face a wall of discouragement.

I wish we could be of more help to her -- not just of the hand-holding variety.

I am alternately optimistic and scared shitless.

And inspired.

Ali's the coffee or tea girl.

You'll find me here.

Odd Fellows, originally uploaded by Vicki (Knitorious) / Victoria-Pictoria.

This year it's Log Cabin Socks, last year it was an Odd Fellow or two sporting Santa hats. My Christmas knitting seems to rely heavily on the DPNs in my arsenal of tools.

This photo arrived in my mailbox this morning, part of my twice monthly Photojojo Photo Time Capsule. I love that little blast from my Flickr-past email.

Speaking of Flickr... have you seen or tried FlickrFox? I totally love that, too.

Also in my Photo Time Capsule this morning were some shots of the EZ Mitered Mittens and coordinating Noro Striped Scarf that I gave to my SIL last year. I was about to cast on for a final pair of Log Cabin Socks last night -- a gift for one of my nephews -- when I received word that he'd really like a nice warm scarf. w00t! I can do that. My SIL's scarf was an adaptation using Silk Garden and Cascade 220, and I'm looking forward to doing this one up using nothing but Noro -- and hopefully that wonderful Turn-A-Square Hat, too.

Can you believe it's December 1st? It's come in like a lion, too. Um, I guess that's March with the lion and lamb thing, but you get the idea. We didn't get all that much snow, but it continues to fall plus it's blowing and drifting, which makes plowing useless, and it's slippery with spotty patches of ice. The drive to work was a bit treacherous.