Coming up for air

I didn’t intend to let 10 whole days go by before I wrote again, but the past week has been a whirlwind of various hardware hiccups and frustration. Somehow though I’ve managed to get all of my pattern orders from TNNA printed out and boxed up and ready to go. Most of them went out early this week, and the last 10 boxes are stacked on the floor beside me right now, awaiting pickup by the USPS tomorrow. Now Eric won’t have to listen to me whining that I need a shipping department! (At least until next year….)

I didn’t make it to my knitting group again tonight, and I’m really missing the girls a lot lately. Now that my workload should calm down a bit, I hope to be able to make it more often.   I’ve found that since our meeting place moved about 8 miles further away from my house it’s all too easy to say I don’t feel like going “all the way over there” at the end of a long day…. But I’m paying a price for that laziness, because I miss my friends!

Oh, did I mention that the newest Knitting Matters design is done? It’s called Mandy — what do you think? I have yet to get a good picture of it for the pattern, but I really like it.  The yarn is Tranquility by South West Trading Company, a blend of bamboo and wool that’s really nice to work with.  (I’d like to do more designs in it actually.)  The pattern isn’t written yet, although I took orders for it in Columbus.  So I’ve got to get busy and get it done so I can ship it to the shops that are waiting patiently.

Now I also need to take care of some follow up stuff from TNNA too though.  There are website updates (adding the new retailers to my shops page), writing my 2 newsletters for July, and getting busy with lots of new designs.  And I know there’s more…where is that “to do” list?

Before I go I have to say that the sudden death of Michael Jackson today is shocking and very sad.  I know his life has been controversial over the past decade or so, but that doesn’t detract from the 35 years of awesome-ness he gave the world before that.   When he was great, he was fantastic!  Just watch some of the clips of his performances they’re showing on tv now and you’ll remember the MJ we all loved.  I’ll always remember him as the sweet little boy he was before all the surgeries and tabloid insanity.  It’s such a shame that someone so gifted ended up the way he did.

TNNA is over and I need to sleep!

Today was the last day of the big trade show here in Columbus.  The show closed at 3:00 and I had my booth packed up and ready to go by 4:00.  Sort of sad to see it end, but glad for the relief from all the hard work!  It was another great show, and Jodi and I both felt it was a very productive few days.  She flew home to Connecticut today with a ton of business cards, yarn samples, books and who knows what else (people are always giving her cool stuff!).  I’ll be going home to Michigan tomorrow with (a little less than) a ton of business cards, yarn color cards and samples, and lots of orders.

I’m staying here tonight because I’d be a threat to anyone else on the roads if I tried to drive home now in my sleep-deprived state.  Looking forward to a good night’s sleep because the hotel is like a ghost hotel now that 90% of the people have gone home.  Except, of course, for the loud women in the room adjoining mine (what luck I have with hotels!).

Where do you meet Michigan shop owners? In Ohio of course!
My patterns are in a few Michigan yarn shops already, but I was flabbergasted by the number of Michigan shop owners that came to see my patterns at the show.  It seemed like every time I turned around there was another one.

See, the lower part looks like a mitten!

I lived in Ohio for 25 years (16 of those in Columbus), and have lived in Michigan for almost 9 years now.  But I haven’t traveled much around the state and don’t have all that much familiarity with the location of lots of towns.  So I can’t count the number of times we had the “mitten” conversation over the past 3 days.  It goes like this:

Me: Oh, you’re from [city in Michigan], where’s that?

Shop Owner [holding left hand out, palm down and touching one point on the hand]: Right here.

If you have no idea what that means (as I didn’t 9 years ago), it’s a way of using your hand to illustrate the mitten-shaped geography of the state of Michigan.  So some people live in “the thumb”, some live on the “pinky finger side”, or whatever.  It’s a funny but very effective shorthand.

Anyway, back to my point.  I was visited by Basketful of Yarn in Clarkston, Back Alley Fibers in Caro, The Wool & The Floss in Grosse Point, Mary Maxim in Port Huron, Knit A Round in Ann Arbor, Threadbear in Lansing, The Knitting Circle in Milford, Labor of Love Yarn in Romeo, Tawas Bay Yarn Co. in Tawas City, and The Clever Ewe in Ada.  (Hope I didn’t leave anyone out.)  It was great to see so many shops at the show buying new yarns and patterns and notions.   With the seriously bad economic situation in Michigan nowadays, we all feel like we’re doing something to help our local economy when we do business with each other.  I’m happy to say that several of the shops have ordered Knitting Matters patterns for the first time (Tawas Bay Yarn Co, Labor of Love, and The Knitting Circle).  And they’ll be joining the 5 other Michigan shops already in the Knitting Matters family (Knit A Round, The Yarn Garden, Heritage Spinning & Weaving, Threadbear, and Skeins on Main).  I couldn’t be more thrilled about this!

I love talking to shop owners about their stores at TNNA because they are all unique and interesting and enthusiastic.  Most of the stores seem to be doing well despite the economic downturn.   But I guess the stores that aren’t doing well wouldn’t have come to the show anyway, so I know that’s not really representative of the entire industry.  But I’m looking at the world through rose-colored glasses in my post-TNNA bliss…and that’s the way I like it.

More about the show in my next post!  Time to sleep.

The sweet smell of success!

Jodi and I have survived 2 grueling days of TNNA with one more to go, and things have been going great!  I’m so exhausted I can barely think straight right now, but just want to write a short post anyway.  It feels so good to be “not-a-newbie”, and be able to give advice to other people who are exhibiting for the first time.  And in addition to better-than-expected sales so far, I’ve been able to meet lots of new people and reconnect with those I met last year.  Jodi is my link to so many people — it seems like she knows EVERYBODY in the yarn industry (right Jodi?).  And it’s amazing how readily people will help each other out — yarn companies helping retailers, and designers and yarn companies helping each other, friends helping friends….and there’s lots of optimism around the show floor too, which gives me renewed enthusiasm for what I do.  And I’m finally at the point where the yarn companies are seeking me out to ask if I want to use their yarns (in the past I’ve always had to initiate the contacts in order to get yarns for designing).  That feels good too, although I have to be careful not to accept yarn from everyone who wants to give it to me because then I get overwhelmed and can’t focus well.  But I think I’m doing pretty good in that department, and being realistic about how much work I can handle in the coming months.   I learned so much from my experience as an exhibitor last year, and even more this year.  I can feel some momentum building for my business now!

I plan to take a photo of my booth tomorrow morning.  If I can get a good enough picture I’ll post it here after I get home.

Ok, I’ve got to try to sleep now.  Tomorrow we have a short day, with the show closing at 3:00.  Then we close down our booths, pack everything up and go home to start filling those orders!

Tick Tock….

It’s June 2 and I go down to Columbus on the 11th…but luckily I’m almost finished with the new jacket design (still need to find buttons for it) and I think I’ll be able to get everything done in time.  But despite my thorough checklists, I know I’ll continue to stress over “what am I forgetting?” every day until I get there … and find out what I forgot.

Last year, my first year as an exhibitor at the  summer TNNA show, I paid for the standard booth package that included white drapes around the booth space.  And it was ok, except that one of the drapery panels had big brown stains on it…ick.  I was able to put a mannequin in front of it, but this year I’m not taking any chances on that happening again.  I bought fabric at JoAnn’s and sewed a couple panels to hang over the white ones.  And I got coordinating fabric for my table and chair covers.   But have you ever sewn your own curtains?  Sheesh, that’s a lot of sewing machine time!  But at least it was simple sewing, and once I made myself sit down to do it I was able to knock it all out at once.  I chose cheery fabrics in cheerful colors (turquoise and lime green…very cool), so my booth will be a “happy-feeling place” that will make people want to stay longer (that’s my hope anyway).

I’ve still got to make sure all my display garments are clean and wrinkle-free, and start planning how to fit everything into my car (fingers crossed for that!).  I’m excited for set up day — hoping my booth will look less like a first-timer’s booth and more inviting than last year.  I picked up a great tip from Claudia last year — she had fresh flowers in her booth (purchased at the wonderful North Market across the street from the convention center).  I’m hoping to do that this time — the scent of fresh peonies would make it much more tolerable to be in my booth for 8 hours a day, that’s for sure!

I’m also excited that I’ll be able to spend time with Jodi, my trusted tech editor, booth helper, and fiber friend.   Since she lives in Connecticut and I live in Michigan, we’ve only “met” each other twice before, so I’m really looking forward to our live chatting time!

Ok, back to the grindstone.  If you’re going to be in Columbus next weekend, please stop by booth 462 to  say hello, smell my flowers, and see the newest Knitting Matters designs!

They use “cutting teeth to rip up your skin”!!

In my last post I wrote about how I was procrastinating on my must-get-done knitting projects by working on a new garden plot in the yard.   Since then I discovered that there are swarms of biting gnats all over the place, preventing me from staying outside for very long unless I’m covered in bug spray (which I hate to use).  I’ve never in my life  — (I’m talking about decades here!) – been attacked by biting gnats before, and they are NASTY.   I get these apparently allergic reactions to them — huge swollen lumps on my scalp where they bite.  When the first one appeared I was really freaked out, of course thinking I had suddenly developed a tumor.  But I soon realized what it was (thanks to some quick online research), and now I’m prepared.   My citronella candles weren’t working very well with the gnats, so I got some soy lemongrass candles that work better (from Swan Creek Candle Co).  And I got some Jason Tea Tree shampoo and conditioner to make my scalp less inviting to the bugs.  And I cover my exposed skin with lavender lotion as an extra precaution.  And believe it or not, it seems to work.  I just watered the flowers and mowed the lawn and didn’t get a single bite.  Hurray!

But get a load of this explanation of why the gnat bites are so awful:

So why does it hurt like mad when a gnat takes a meal from your arm or, even worse, your scalp? The secret is in the mouth parts. Sand gnats don’t just puncture your skin like mosquitoes do. Instead they rip it open using sharp cutting teeth located on the mandible [scary pictures if you follow the link below]. After inserting two sharp, sword-like blades into the skin as anchors, the sand gnat uses the cutting teeth to rip up the skin and get the blood flowing. As if that weren’t enough, the gnat then squirts a chemical into the open wound to inhibit blood clotting. The tiny pool of blood that forms is then sucked up through a straw-like structure called the proboscis. Some human victims have allergic reactions to the chemical and must endure itchy red spots or even swollen welts.”

Source: http://www.knowtheconnection.com/pdf/CC%20sand%20gnat.pdf

Pretty disgusting,  huh?  I’ve been asking around and it sounds like lots of people are being attacked by gnats this year, at least around here.  Ick.

Knitting progress

I’m 2/3 of the way done with the first sleeve on the Tranquility jacket (I need to come up with a name for this design asap), and now I feel a bit more confident that I’ll have enough yarn to finish (but it’ll be close).

Such slow knitting...but such nice yarn!!

The blue Rufflicious is going much slower but I haven’t given up yet on getting it done in time for TNNA.   Why do knitters do this to themselves?  And I say “knitters” because I know lots of other people who attempt to get things knitted on unrealistic timetables and end up pulling their hair out instead.  I’ve tried it a couple of times before, hoping to get a special garment done for an office party or other special occasion.  (Usually unsuccessfully….)  I’ve learned to always have a backup outfit ready to go, just in case.

Now if I can just keep my hands off the gorgeous Misti Alpaca that arrived from Webs yesterday….sooo soft!

Happy Memorial Day to those of you in the US.   Remember, be a safe BBQ’er!

New pattern teaser pic!

Isn't this stitch pattern neat?

This is a little taste of what’s next in the Knitting Matters line of FlexPatterns — it’s a jacket using the new Tranquility yarn by South West Trading Co.  (a blend of wool and bamboo).  I’m having such fun knitting this stitch pattern that I’m going to be disappointed when it’s finished.

I’m planning to release this design at TNNA next month, so it’s got to be done by June 10.   I’ve got one front done and am almost up to the armholes on the back.  Can’t tell you more, but I’m really excited about this design.  Sure hope it turns out the way I imagine it.

Think I can make it?

And just to add a little more pressure on myself as I get ready for TNNA, I’ve also cast on for a Rufflicious in my size so I can wear it in my booth at the show.  It’s a gorgeous blue shade of Bebe Cotsoy yarn that makes me happy — and it looks good on me too!  So  now I’m trying to divide my time between 2 projects that need to be done in — oh crap — only 4 more weeks.  With that kind of pressure, there’s only one thing to do: go work in the garden!

Garden Plans

At our last house I spent hours and hours working on my plan to turn the entire back yard into a garden, complete with secluded sitting areas and twisting paths.  I was making great progress too, as evidenced by this photo:

Garden at my previous house

But after we lived there for about 5 years, the next door neighbors built a HUGE addition to their house, including big windows that faced directly on our yard.  That took all the pleasure out of it for me.  You see, I really hate to have neighbors watching me in my own yard — and these neighbors liked to peek out the windows all the time to see what I was doing.  So it didn’t take long for me to start driving around the more rural parts of our suburb trying to find privacy.   We fell in love with our current home because it sits in the middle of 2 acres of woods and it just oozes privacy (at least while the leaves are on the trees and we can’t see the neighbors down the hill).  But because of all the trees, there isn’t much opportunity for me to work my gardening magic here.  I do have a small flower garden beside the front door, but not much else.

Yesterday I talked to Mom and got to hear her plans for her own flower garden this year.  Whenever I talk to someone else about their garden I end up saying how much I miss MY garden.  Well, today I decided that I’m tired of saying that and feeling sad about it, and I’m going to DO something about it.  Witness this, my new soon-to-be garden plot! (Click the picture to see a bigger version of my weeds….if you dare)

Definitely a work in progress!

This area is visible from a floor-to-ceiling window in our dining room and is west-facing, so I think it’s a perfect spot to put some flowers. (Don’t tell the deer!) There are some remnants of hostas from years ago here, and it’s usually filled with weeds and the ever encroaching ferns, pachysandra, and vinca from neighboring beds. Have you ever tried to get rid of freakin’ ferns? I’m telling you, those suckers do not want to die!

Anyway, this is what it looked like after I spent an hour or so digging up weeks and vines and ferns. I haven’t decided exactly what to do with it yet, but it felt SO good to start digging in the dirt again!!

A Bird-tastic day at the park

The road commission was working on our road yesterday (what else is new?), and the constant backup beeping of the trucks was driving me absolutely bonkers.   The person who came up with that idea for backup beepers should be shot was brilliant, because I’m sure it has prevented many accidents.  But tell me, WHY is it necessary for any truck to be left in reverse, beeping away, for 30 minutes at a time?  I’ll bet the construction guys all wear earplugs just to keep from going insane.  Sheesh.

Anyway, because of the incessant beeping, I loaded up all my stuff in the car and went to a local metropark to knit work.  It’s one of my favorite places to go when I need a break — in fact, I keep a folding chair in my car all summer long just in case I decide to escape to the park.   It was a bit chilly near the water yesterday, so I mostly stayed in the car with windows down to catch the breeze, and got several very productive work hours.   I love to birdwatch as well, and was thrilled to see a Baltimore Oriole only a dozen yards away.  He treated me to a good 15 minutes of beautiful singing as he hopped around in a big tree.  (Here’s a website where you can hear him sing too)  I think that’s the first time I ever got to hear an oriole sing!  As usual, the park was hosting lots of red-winged blackbirds too.  They’re always so easy to spot, but I still get a thrill every single time I see one of them — is that weird?  At home we just spotted our resident hummingbird for the first time this year, so Eric quickly filled its feeder and put it out.   The feeder hangs from a hook on the roof overhang just outside our back windows, so we have a clear view of it from inside the house.  All summer long, whenever either of us sees him at the feeder we get excited and shout “the hummer’s here!”   Even if we see him every day, we still get that same thrill.   I think it’s because we only get a fleeting glimpse of him and then he’s gone.   I should try to get a photo of him this year.   What, you don’t think I can catch him with the camera?  I think I can.  I was lucky enough to get this photo of a hummingbird when we were on vacation in Ontario a couple years ago:

It's blurry because he moves fast, but can you see him?

This one was visiting the flowers on the deck of our rental house, and he buzzed my head several times during the week as he dined on the nectar in the plant right beside me. It was way cool to hear that buzzing sound so close.  So I’m confident I can get a shot of our own hummer if I put any effort into it.

Spring has finally sprung here in southeastern Michigan, and the flowering trees are in full bloom.  Our forsythia bloomed while I was in Savannah a couple weeks ago, but now there are crabapples and almond trees covered with blossoms.  And even a magnolia tree here and there — gotta love those!

When I talked to Mom today for Mother’s Day, she said that my sister was taking her flower shopping — it’s become a tradition to get her flowers or mulch or something for her garden every year since she got serious about her flowers several years ago.  One year we went down to Ohio and dug a bed to start her garden for her, and have watched as she tries different flowers every year and reports on the success or failure of each one.  Here’s a picture of her little garden from 2  years ago.

The labels were for her, so she'd remember what was planted there.

She reported today that the rhododendron has died this year though, so she’s trying to decide what to put in its place.  She’s got a beautiful azalea bush on the other side of the porch.  But this side has southwest exposure, so she probably wouldn’t be able to have another azalea here.  I’m excited to see what she ends up putting in there though.  Maybe I’ll go for a visit in June and surprise her with some new plants.  I really need to visit more than once a year anyway…just wish it wasn’t such a drive to get there.

Amazon, you’ve got to be kidding me!

(Wow, my second post of the day…must have a lot on my mind!)

What's on YOUR Kindle?

I was thinking last night that I’d like to write an update about my experience using my new Kindle 2 ebook reader. But today I’ve discovered that Amazon plans to release ANOTHER new version of their Kindle ebook reader (the Kindle DX), only a few months after the Kindle 2 was released. What the heck? So I’ve shelled out several hundred dollars for the Kindle 2, and in a few months it’ll be outdated? Not happy at all about this. But at least the DX will have a significantly higher price tag (unbelievably high, if you ask me), so I’m not tempted to buy it.  It’s also bigger, so that’s a negative in my mind.

I understand the whole idea of planned obsolescence, but just a few months between releases?  Sheesh.  (Read more customer comments about it on the Amazon forums if you want.)

But I digress. Here’s what I like and dislike about my experience with Kindle 2 after about a month of using it regularly:

Likes:
1. Size and weight — it’s a perfect size for reading with one hand, and is in fact easier than reading a paperback with one hand because you don’t have to hold the pages open.

2. Ability to make notations and highlights in my books and search them.  And the built-in dictionary is awesome — just highlight a word and it automatically pulls up a definition.  How many times have you been reading a book and come across a word you wanted to look up, but didn’t want to get up from your comfortable reading position?  This eliminates that problem forever — way cool feature.

3.  Since I can store over a thousand books on it, I’m never without something to read.  And I don’t have to think ahead about which book or books I might want to take with me when I leave home — I can take all of them.

4.  Long battery life.  I’ve mostly used it for reading a couple hours a day, and have only had to recharge it once so far.  I make sure to keep the wireless turned off when I’m not online, to save battery power.

5.  I’m reading lots more than I have in the recent past.  And the book prices are reasonable — mostly $9.99, even for hardcovers.

6.  It’s a great conversation starter.  Whenever I read in public I get questions from curious onlookers and get a chance to share my new toy!

Dislikes:
1. Not enough knitting books available in Kindle format. I wish they’d spend more time getting publishers to publish in this format, instead of redesigning new hardware.  In fact, if you’re reading this blog because you’re a knitter, you could do me a big favor:  whenever you’re on Amazon, there’s a link under the book photo saying “Tell the Publisher! I’d like to read this book on Kindle”. If you click it, it automatically registers one more request for Kindle formats.  Please, click that link on all the knitting books you can!

2. Although I can search the notations I’ve made in one book at a time, I wish there was a way to search all of my book annotations together. What if I sort of remember a note I made about something I read, but don’t remember which book it was in? The way it works now, I’d have to open each book and search the notations separately.

3.  I wish it had the ability to adjust the page contrast (lighter/darker).   And color images would be nice, but I totally get that this isn’t intended to be a laptop.

4.  In the past, I’ve always donated my used books to the library or passed them on to my sister and mother.  But I can’t do that with Kindle, which is good for the environment I guess, but it really makes sharing books a thing of the past.   I’ll still buy hard copies of every new Dean Koontz release though, because that’s one author my mom, sister and I all love, and sharing his books has been a family tradition for years.

So, what’s on YOUR Kindle?

Litter Box Woes, and other cat poo adventures

Libby, my little darling

I was hoping this problem had resolved itself while I was in Savannah, but it didn’t.   A few weeks ago Libby started peeing on the carpet instead of in the litter boxes.   At first I thought it was Mickey doing the dirty deed, because he’s the one who’s always running around the house acting crazy like a male cat does.  (Yes, he’s neutered but he’s still a handful).  But I was wrong.  One day I walked into the litter box room (actually our furnace room on the main floor) as Libby was coming out, and found a fresh pee spot on the carpet.  As further alibi for Mickey, he was upstairs  at the time.  As evidenced by this photo:

Who, me? I'm just chillin' here....

So once I knew who was doing it, I tried to figure out why she was doing it.  She’s almost 15 years old and starting to show her age, so I thought it might be caused by that.  But since she was still going in the box to do her “other” business (if you know what I mean), I was puzzled.  I made sure to keep the boxes as clean as possible (fun!), and watched her continue to do this multiple times a week for the next couple of weeks.  The litter box room has indoor/outdoor carpet on top of concrete, so I’ve been using Woolite Oxy Carpet Stain Remover to clean up after her “accidents”, with great results. But too much is too much, and it’s starting to be a problem.  (Yes, I’ve measured the room in preparation for putting down linoleum soon…).

So I took her to the vet yesterday and had her blood and urine tested.  Both tests came out completely normal.  The vet, who is a cat specialist, says that he thinks she has just developed a sudden aversion to the boxes for some unknown reason.  Most likely she’s decided that if there’s anything already in the box from a previous visit, she’s not getting in.  So she just chooses a dry spot on the carpet and lets loose.  I’m counting my blessings that she’s only doing this in that room — I think if she was doing it all around the house I’d lose my mind.

So Dr. Wonderful Vet (not sarcasm — I really love him!) suggested that I add another litter box in the same room and see if she’s happy with that arrangement.  So yesterday after I brought her home I went right back out to Petsmart and bought not one but TWO new litter boxes and fresh litter.  So now we have 4 litter boxes for 2 cats, which means that they can each have one box for pee and one box for poo.  What more can you ask, right?  I took Libby in and showed her the new boxes, but she showed absolutely no interest and turned around and walked out.  At 7 am this morning I went in there to see if it worked.  Well, somebody had peed in the new box, but somebody had also peed on the carpet again.  (I sure wish I had a camera in there so I could tell which cat was doing what!  Hey, I could upload my “Cats Gone Wild” litter box videos to YouTube — wonder if anyone would watch that 50,000 times?! LOL)

So I scooped everything and waited.  Later in the morning I found another pee spot on the carpet.   The vet says it may take her a few days to accept the new boxes, so we’re not giving up yet.  But I think I’d better go shopping for linoleum pretty soon….

Remember the good old days when people let their cats go outside to do their business?  Sigh.

Yesterday was a day of more cat poo adventures too.  (If you stop reading now, believe me, I’ll understand.) Since Eric is home on vacation this week, he’s trying to take care of some chores on his honey-do list.  So he had scheduled tree trimming guys, and they just happened to decide to come over yesterday.  Knowing that I had to get Libby in her carrier to go to the vet at 3:00, I was stressed all day worrying about how I would be able to grab her when she was hiding under the king size bed because of all the chain saw noise outside.  (That was eventually accomplished by taking the mattresses off the bed and with much hissing and running around.)  But Mickey had his own little accident too, and it was my fault.  You see, he had gone upstairs to hide when the chain saws started, but he kept coming partway down the stairs acting like he wanted to get into the bedroom with Libby.  So I took him in there and closed the door so they’d both feel more secure.  Well, big mistake on my part.  About a half hour later, as I came out of my office to go downstairs for something, I smelled something VERY foul.  After checking to see if the husband had just come out of the bathroom (ha!), I went looking for the source of the odor.  Of course you know what’s coming here — my nose led me to the bedroom, where I found a fresh puddle of “chocolate pudding” on the bedroom carpet.  Apparently Mickey’s stress gave him diarrhea, and he was probably trying to go to the litter box when I put him in the bedroom.  I felt so bad for him, but felt even worse for myself when I had to clean THAT up.  Oh man, I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy (well, maybe I would!).  I apologized to Mickey over and over for the rest of the day — I felt so bad that he was that upset.  Poor little kitties.  We all had a very stressful day yesterday.  But today everything is calm — at least so far….

Savannah pictures added!

I’ve gone back and added pictures to my three Savannah posts, so go back and check them out!  Here are just a few more….

One of the 22 or so park squares in the historic district

Typical residential neighborhood view in the historic district

Here's how Mickey greeted me after my weeklong absence..."Rub my belly, Mom!"