You can take the girl out of Dixie, but you can't take the Dixie out of the girl!

Hello. I am amazed at the honesty, humor, and warmth of your blog.

That's out of the way. I found you because I'm a relatively new knitter--I taught myself to knit about 8 months ago and took to it like a fish to water--and when I was still an embarrassingly new knitter, I saw some skeins of Patons UpCountry on super-sale at Michaels, and bought six skeins for like $25. Oh but wait, I was too new to know that you can't make much of anything out of six skeins of yarn that are different colors! I made my boyfriend a long bulky scarf out of the two grey skeins, and now I'm stuck with two skeins of beige and two skeins of light blue, and I Googled UpCountry to see if I could find any holdouts (no), but I came across your lament involving UpCountry and Elizabeth Arden. I am in your court. Bath & Body Works discontinued Cucumber Melon (much better than the current Cucumber Melon, this smelled more like honeydew) when I was a wee slip of a girl, but I felt the same miserable injustice then as I do now, with four useless skeins of discontinued yarn.

What do I do? Should I sell the yarn to hoarders on ebay or sit and stare at my four skeins and remind myself that a yarn bargain is never really a bargain unless you get enough yarn (and aren't too stupid to not know how much yarn you need)? I don't want to make any hats or scarves, I want to make a vest or a sweater or something out of UpCountry. And never can I have it. Boooooo-hoo.

Just a short rant to someone who understands. I don't know anyone else at all who knits so I feel kind of alone with my needles sometimes.

XO,
kattheworld@msn.com
(I'm a 24-yr-old woman living in New England.)

Kat, you should knit hats, and if you are by any chance west-northwest of Boston (news flash to all you Big Staters out there: New England is bigger than you might think, and Caribou and Westport [ME and CT respectively] are not within let's-do-lunch distance of each other), you should come to our knitting group.

The language quiz is fascinating. I would have said I was 60 Yankee, 40 GAE, but here's how I scored:
40 Yankee
35 GAE
15 Upper Midwestern
10 Dixie
0 Midwestern
I have lived 41 years in Massachusetts, 4 in Ohio and 1 in Illinois (and, lest there be any misunderstanding, 0 elsewhere). So I am quite at a loss to explain how the Upper Midwestern got in there, never mind the Dixie. Most intriguing.

LOL @ Lucia -- "there's dixie in there somewhere!!"

Madeleine -- HI!! Long time no talk! Hi!

Kat -- Hats!! You can make all of the following from your UpCountry:
1) 2-3 hats
2) One kitty pi (you may need to augment with a skein of wool in the same gauge, I did this for my kitty pi)
3) fuzzyfeet!!
4) hats!
5) felted purse
6) felted anything! Patons upcountry felts perfectly, like a dream

Thanks for the kind words :)

did I mention ... hats!!!

Tag, missy!
http://www.feminista.com/buttonwillow/?p=240

i am a yank!

who knew?

but also 20% dixie. and some midwestern.

the funny part is i've lived in boston and LA. and that's it.

so it must be my split personalities.

Well, that was fun, but puzzling! 65% G.A.E, 15% Dixie, 10% Yankee(!), 5% Upper Midwest(!) Was born & raised in S. Calif; did live for awhile here & there in the south, during a marriage to a Georgia boy in another lifetime, so I understand the Dixie part - but the Yankee & Upper Midwest part, hmmm - I don't think Northeastern Georgia nor North Central Texas qualifies for either of those, does it, y'all?

Your knowledge of the comma splice makes you a linguistic goddess in my eyes. Did the test ask about comma splices? No, the test FEARED the comma splice, and tried to pretend it wasn't an issue.

Yes, I'm still obsessed with this....

Hi Laurie,
I was 50% GAE, 25% Yankee, 15% dixie, 5% midwestern and 5% upper midwestern. Guess that makes sense. I lived 21 years of my life in PA, just 10 minutes north of the Mason-Dixon but sort of close to the midwest, 3 years in Boston and about 8 months here in SoCal. I do say ya'll quite a bit. My hubby thinks I say "orange" in a strange, yankee way. "aRe-ninge" as opposed to his Ore-inge. How do you say it?

Mine was 70% General American English, 15% Upper Midwestern, 10% Yankee, 5% Midwestern. I really thought I'd have more Midwestern and Upper Midwestern, as I grew up in Michigan (spent 22 years there.) But I've been in Seattle for 26 years, I guess we speak GAE here because people from other areas say there's no accent here. I really don't know where the 10% Yankee came from, as I've never been to New England! I thought I'd have some Dixie in mine because I read alot of books by Southern authors....oh well.

I wish I could say "y'all"...it sounds so much nicer than "you guys", which is what I usually say.

people tend to fall back into their original accents when angry or depressed which might explain your last score :)

You have the diluting influence of LA. Is there a profile for like SoCal??? For like Valley Girl? How bout like 80's retro speak?
Do you think you'd fit into your own category??...100% OCD knitting drinking single crazy cat woman?
You are still too funny (lookin)
HA!

I don't speak American English. Something to do with being Australian I think. What does enquiries mean to you? And the stupid quiz crashed my browser by opening two pop ups with the 30 tabs I had open. Grump.

i'm 75% general, 15% yankee (huh?) and 10% dixie. i grew up in nebraska, and still live here. where'd i get the dixie?

I'm 60% GAE, 15% Upper MW, 15% Yankee, and 10% Dixie. I'm first generation Californian from Okie/Texan dust-bowl parents with very little education (theirs) and only high school and technical school (me). The only time I didn't live in CA was a couple of years in Oregon. I spent 1 week in VA/DC area 10 yrs ago and 1 week in GA about 5 yrs ago. That's about the extent of my travels. Go figure!!

50% Yankee, 35% General, which makes sense. But 10% Upper Midwestern is strange, unless the upper MidWest extends to Canada. And the 5% Dixie is utterly baffling.

I've lived in New England, New York, and England. My boyfriend grew up in Britain, and my grandparents were from the Canadian maritimes. So where did that Dixie come from?

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