Concentration

The cure for the "I didn't get the job" blues?

Lace knitting.

I'm about 12 rows into it, and so far things are going well. Winding the yarn into a ball almost killed me, though--I need to check my mad money level and see how close I am to buying a swift. It didn't help that the yarn was slightly felted in places in the hank. I ended up doing way more work with my left arm than I would have liked to.

Anyway, I'm using the laceweight I picked up in the last SnB free-for-all. It's shades of russet with a little bit of silvery grey. I'm hoping that the color changes aren't so drastic that the pattern gets lost. It's looking fine so far--phew!

I don't have pictures today; maybe tomorrow.

Ta-Da!

I give you... The Pride Afghan!




I'm a tiny bit concerned about the wavy edges, but I'm sure they'll block out. If not, I might have enough black yarn left to give it another stabilizing edging round.

This thing looks even cooler in person. It's awesome. Now I just need to con the knitters into helping me weave in the ends, and it'll be all set!

Urban Gardening

I was hoping to have some lovely pictures today of the sewing-up party: knitters helping each other out, finishing a charity afghan, maybe getting a little raucous. But... NO ONE SHOWED UP. Bums. Heather and I heroically sewed our little fingers to the bone, snacking on semi-fancy cheese and amazing cake, sipping a tasty riesling. We got surprisingly far, but didn't finish. That's okay; I'll try to get it done tomorrow. Thank you, Heather!

In other news, I took a look at my windowsill garden this morning.

I have cat grass, sweet basil, and mint. The plants have been a little droopy lately. In fact, the mint is looking downright ragged.

I looked more closely, and noticed that I have bugs!

My camera doesn't have a macro setting, so I pointed out the bug with a red arrow.

In fact, I have lots of bugs.

Perhaps that's why my plants are droopy!

So, following my brother's advice, I cut a blade of bug-infested grass and took it to the garden center in a plastic bag. I was expecting the nice employees to immediately recognize my bugs and direct me in the proper way to save my plants. I walked up to a group of four (4!) garden center employees and threw myself on their mercy. They, um, couldn't help me. They directed me to another guy, who I assumed had the knowledge. Actually, he walked over to the pesticides and started reading packages, glancing doubtfully at the bag from time to time. In the end, I noticed the pesticide that was labeled "for houseplants," and he agreed that that one was probably what I needed. Humph. So much for specialized knowledge!

So, I bought my houseplant pesticide, came home, and sprayed the plants down. I feel a little bad for killing the bugs--they're only doing what comes naturally, and they're not actually a threat to me--but I'm determined to successfully raise some damn houseplants.

Friday Musings

After spending the weekend of David's wedding pretty much wearing nothing but dresses, I decided that I wanted to be the sort of woman who wears dresses a lot. I've been tired of my current wardrobe for a while, and dresses seemed like an excellent solution: different, comfortable, work-appropriate, and cost effective--one garment, rather than a new top and new pants/skirt. Not to mention the fact that swirly skirts bring out the six-year-old girl in me and make me feel like a princess.

So I went and bought half a dozen new dresses, which I've been liberally sprinkling into my wardrobe for the last two weeks. I've gotten a lot of compliments--even (or perhaps especially) on the red dress that someone *coughSamaracough* told me was too much red. So this morning I started wondering: is it that I just look incredibly fabulous in dresses, or were my coworkers as sick of my wardrobe as I was? I mean, I've spent the last four years basically in a uniform: black pants and button-down shirt. I've always thought that was a good look for me. It's professional, it's classic, it's flattering, there's a lot of variation available in button-down shirts. In short, it's safe. Now I'm branching out, and I've noticed a decided difference in my mood. I feel more energetic and more confident. (Two weeks of compliments will do that to a girl.) It feels really nice.


On the crafting front, I haven't been doing a lot. I've done pretty much no knitting since Monday, when I got to the halfway point on my wombat's body. (That sounds kind of gross.) I've been doing some crocheting, though--working on the next hanky (purple variegated crochet thread!) and edging afghan squares. I took a frantic e-mail poll this week, and it looks like all of the squares will be done in time for the sewing-up party tomorrow night. Hooray! I went to Liquor Barn the other night to get snacks and wine, and left with four bottles of wine, three kinds of cheese, and three kinds of cookies. (One of the bottles was for my personal use.) I spent way more money than I meant to, but I'm totally excited. I just hope enough people come to the party to justify the amount of food I bought! If not, I guess there'll just be more cheese for me.

New!

Check out the top of my sidebar--I have a dragon egg! Idea flagrantly stolen from the Den of Chaos. Click on my egg to help my dragon hatch!

Briefly

I finished my fourth hanky! I'm a little afraid that the red will run when I wash it, but I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Learning about edging things is an interesting process. For example, I was concerned that the edging patterns wouldn't compensate for having to turn corners, and would therefore be too tight and look silly. So far, I'm having the opposite problem: my edgings are looser on the outside than on the inside, so they tend to ruffle a bit. And in the example above, the little picoted arches are far too crowded to lay nicely side by side and display their beauty. Maybe I'm placing my initial stitches too close together--but if I did them farther apart, I would have to deliberately loosen and stretch my stitches, beyond my natural crochet tension. Since a lot of these appear to be designed to be crocheted in a long strip and then sewn on to fabric, it seems to me that a more natural chain should be the way to go.

But then again, I haven't washed any of these yet. It's entirely possible that my cotton thread will shrink, leaving me with the too-tight effect I was worried about initially. I guess we'll see!

What's Goin' On

Well, last week's plans didn't quite go as, er, planned. I finished my afghan square, plus one more. The afghan now looks like this:

Twenty-nine squares of Cascade-y goodness. Thirteen to go. This yarn will be raffled off on June 28--let's hope it looks much more like an afghan by then!

Hanky number three now looks like this:

Pretty! Let's take a closer look.

Ooh! Ahh!

Hanky number 4 looks like this:

What do you mean, you don't remember hanky number 4? Silly people! It's clearly there.

Bellatrix has been frogged. I decided that two at once was too much for this pattern and the way I'm doing it. It stung a little to frog these socks, but their day will come.

The second SKP sock has also been frogged.

The dishcloth, the oriole socks, and the wombat still look exactly the same as they did last week.

In my defense, I lost some knitting time after I accidentally closed my finger in a door. The bottom third of the nail on my left middle finger is now very colorful, from blue-black at the bottom to a very pretty eggplant at the top. It hurts significantly less now, for which I am profoundly grateful. (My doctor offered to drill a hole in my nail to relieve the pressure, as did my friend Aaron [he got a drill press for graduation]. I declined both offers, because... ew.) I also just haven't really felt like knitting this week--odd, after last Sunday's frenzy of enthusiasm. Sometimes I don't make much sense.

So, my knitting goal this week is much more modest: Make some wombat progress. Maybe finish the body. I think I can handle that.