be true to your school

...or your parents' school, if that's who you happen to be knitting for. I hereby ruin a Christmas surprise:


Here's my latest acquisition, Illini sock yarn from Scout's Handpainted Swag! Sadly, the colors, which are the whole point of the photo (do you hear me, camera phone? I'm talking to you!) are distorted--the orange looks quite pink, but it's actually a true school-colors orange. The Illini colorway was originally created as a custom order for someone else. I saw it on Scout's blog and knew I had to get some and make socks for my dad, who (along with my much-less-enthusiastic mom, also a U of I alum) roots for the Fighting Illini. Even if he only wears them on game days, I know he'll like them. I can't wait to see how this puppy knits up. (I like to call things "puppies," don't you?) I think I'm going to break with my time-honored tradition and do a swatch. When I do, I'll post it here so that anyone who doubts Ms. Scout's amazing yarn-dyeing prowess will hang their heads in shame. It'll make you say "Oskee-WOW-wow!" (super-cheesy and obvious Illini-fan inside joke; yes, I'm ashamed of myself, and also reminded of the Continental).

ETA that today (now that it's past midnight) is my parents' 36th anniversary. They met at U of I. He took her out for pizza. She knit him a sweater. They managed to put up with my sisters and me. They still hold hands in public and won't let anyone sit between them at restaurants. Awwwwww.

we did it... we beat cancer

...well, not yet, actually. Tomorrow is the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, and I'm doing it, along with my friend and intermittent work-out partner Wendy (sadly, she doesn't have a blog; she doesn't even have a cell phone), and a bunch of my favorite ladies. I've never done it before, but always wanted to--I'd always see it on the news later that day, after the race was over, and be like, "Ohhh I should've done that. I'm against cancer!" So I'm glad that Scout, and the Village Wools team, lit a fire under my ass this year. Here's why:

That's my grandmother. Her name was Lois, like Superman's girlfriend. She was a WAC in World War II. She was a secretary for some important general, whose name she was forbidden to disclose even years later when my mom was a curious kid, and who was involved with the Manhattan Project. She had a lot of important documents in her office, and because of that, she was required to keep a gun in her desk and do markmanship training, at a time when very few women were allowed to use guns. The Manhattan Project is where she met and married my grandfather, who was also in the army. Since they were stationed in Oak Ridge, and everything was all super-secret and they couldn't tell their families what they were doing, they had only their Army buddies there as witnesses, and as far we know, there were no wedding pictures. (We went to the museum at Oak Ridge when I was a teenager, hoping to find some trace of them, but we didn't.) Her sister Carole, my great-aunt, once told me that during the war, she and Uncle John had saved up enough gas ration to drive to Florida (from Iowa) on vacation, and she suggested to Grandma that they stop by for a visit. Since my grandmother couldn't tell her why she wasn't allowed to visit, she had to let Aunt Carole think it was personal. Aunt Carole said, "I didn't know why she was mad at me. I was so hurt. Then after the war, when we found out, I was so proud."

My grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer in the 1970s, had a mastectomy, and thought she was done with it. But it came back. She never got her regular bloodwork done, like you're supposed to after you've had cancer, and by the time she felt sick enough to admit it and go see a doctor, it was too late.

My mom was there at the end, watching her carefully, because even at death's door my grandmother would never admit pain. If the nurses asked if she needed more morphine, she'd say she was fine. Mom and the nurses had to keep a close eye on her, to see the tension coming back into her body as the pain returned. Yeah, my grandmother was a tough old broad. I'm proud of her too. She died in September 1995. So tomorrow I'm running for her.

Dammit, now I'm all weepy.

oh, crap.

I slept through Worldwide Knit in Public Day!
Well, not the whole thing, it isn't even noon yet, but I missed knitting with my girlies at Flying Star. I ended up having to go into work yesterday on my day off, and even after I left I spent the evening feeling alternately sleepy because I hadn't slept well the night before and angry because I had another 50-hour week at what is supposed to be my McJob until I figure out what the hell I'm doing with my life. Naturally, angry took over as soon as I went to bed and I lay there thinking of really awesome comebacks to everything everybody said to me, all day, as well as everything they might say someday in the future.
Anyway, the day's not over yet. I'm bringing my circus-freak jaywalkers (yup, still working on 'em) with me everywhere I go today, since my cotton hourglass is finally too big to drag around, and hopefully I can get some pictures as evidence.

you don't need no stinking gauge swatch

...not for the Teeny Tiny Spite Sock! (Can also be used for non-spiteful purposes.) So I know the pattern was requested (and thanks! I'm flattered!) but I'm not a very strict pattern-follower to begin with, and I just kind of winged it, so prepare for a super-casual pattern.

Using sock yarn (I used Regia Crazy Colors) and size 1 needles, CO 12 stitches. I used 4 dpns, so I had four stitches on each needle (minus the working needle). Work in k2p2 ribbing for 4 rounds, then stockinette for 10 rounds.
Heelflap: at the beginning of the next round, *k4, turn work, p4, turn work, repeat from * three times.
(Now this is where it gets a little weird. The only socks I've ever made are jaywalkers, so when it came time to turn the heel I had no idea what to do, since I was only working with 4 stitches. So this is what I ended up doing--although if I knew how to do a proper short-row heel, that would have worked better, I bet.)
Turn work. K4 (the heel flap stitches), pu and k 2, k8 (the instep stitches), pu and k 2, k 16 (so that you have knit an entire round). Now let's throw in some short rows. *K 4, turn work, p 4, turn work, repeat from * once more.
Decreasing the gussets: k 4, k2 tog, k 8, ssk, k one round even, k4, k2tog, k 7, ssk. Done with the decreasing! (That's the beauty of picking up only 2 gusset stitches.)
K in good old stockinette until you feel you're ready to decrease for the toe. Then let me know how you did it, because frankly mine looks like crap, and it's all pointy and hard like a ballerina's. You know those wooden things in the toe of a ballet shoe? Like that, but with yarn.

Finishing: Don't bother weaving in ends, it'll make you want to kill yourself. And probably others. Draw the end of the yarn through the toe to the inside of the sock, and tuck the heel-end of the yarn to the inside too. And vi-ola. An apology for a late gift, a charming wee Christmas ornament, or a physical manifestation of interpersonal conflict: the Teeny Tiny Spite Sock!
(Seriously though, your comments made me all warm and fuzzy. High-fives all around.)

i got yer flingin' flangin' sock right here!

What do you do when someone who doesn't knit thinks it's the most hilarious thing ever to ask you repeatedly to make them something?


If you're me, you cast on 12 stitches, do a few rows of 1x1 ribbing, a few more of straight stockinette, do a 4-stitch-wide heelflap, pick up 2 stitches on each side for the gussets, realize you didn't turn the heel, do a few short rows, and generally make it up as you go along until you have the World's Tiniest Spite Sock. (That's a quarter for scale.)

you can't resist us, mr. powers

So I've been a sewing fool lately. I made McCalls 5137, but shirt-length instead of dress-length, and discovered that proportion-wise, it really should have been a dress. I cut down and resized an enormous hoodie that I bought for like $5 on some ill-fated field archaeology trip, when it turned freezing cold and rained unexpectedly, and we trudged, shivering, into Wal-mart to get warm and dry. And I have been making other secret, secret things for people who may read this blog. I love my sewing machine. I don't know how I survived all those years without one. I sit at my desk at work and think how I'd rather be at home, sewing. Sadly, I still have no pictures of anything I've made. I'm still working on my second hourglass sweater and my second pair of jaywalkers, but since they are my second of each, they're not as exciting as starting something new. So they're going kind of slowly. They may go slower still if I start another knitting project, which I'm trying to convince myself not to do. But I have the yarn and needles for Picovoli, calling out to me... I suppose I could always try cross-mojination.

i am disappointed in this hat.

It's based on the Cabled Newsboy from SNBN, but I took out the cables and ribs and did eyelets instead, as you can (sort of ) see in the middle pic, and neglected to account for the difference in gauge. So the hat is sort of short and wide. I also made the brim smaller since I thought it was a little big on the first one I made, but now I think this one's too small. (Insert your own Goldilocks joke, I'm too tired for corny humor today. Or any humor, really.) Check out the picture on the right, for example. The thing is, now that I'm looking at the pics, I'm kind of liking it. But on my head, I wasn't too fond of it. It's especially hard to decide if I like it or not because it's not for me, it's for Kate, and she's 2,000 miles away and can't try it on.

I'm probably going to redo the brim. If it were for me, I'd add a pom-pom too. But it's not. Unless you want a pom-pom, Katie?

kenmore mini ultra: you suck it. sears: you rock it.

So I finally summoned the strength to call it quits with my adorable but dysfunctional Kenmore Mini Ultra. I took it back to Sears, who took it back with no receipt (because the purchase was in their computer anyway) and got me a slightly better model. I brought it home and couldn't bring myself to open the box. In the wake of all that frustration, I didn't want to risk more heartbreak... so I procrastinated a while. But when I eventually decided it was time, I plugged that puppy in, wound me a bobbin, threaded the needle, and it sewed a beautiful, perfect straight seam that actually functions as a seam (i.e. the stitches are real stitches, they don't just appear to be stitches until you get to the end of the seam and pick it up and the two pieces of fabric fall apart and you realize it was all a facade). I am so delighted. I'm not going to bed until I finish my first skirt. Yay!

ETA: One a.m. and the skirt is finished! Yeah! Except that I measured wrong and it's like four inches too big. I'm just going to overlap it. It won't show much. That's the beauty of a circle skirt. Damn, I'm totally knitting something to match. I'm thinking a Loop d Loop ballet top in Blue Sky Cotton (held doubled)?

clap your hands say yeah!

I finished Clapotis! Well, finished the knitting anyway. I have like ten skeins' worth of ends to weave in, and then I'll probably have a block party next week after I've finished Kate's Skully sweater. You know, the sweater that was supposed to be her Christmas present? Like, Christmas 2005. The one that already happened. That one, yeah. So as an extra-special "sorry I'm a spaz" gift, and since she can't exactly wear Skully for several months now, I'm knitting her a Headline News newsboy cap. She liked my non-cabled one, so I didn't cable hers. Instead I gave it an eyelet pattern, both for visual interest and for ventilation, since she wants it to be a hat for all seasons. Blogger is freaking out right now, so I'm going to post a pic and call it a day. Sorry about the weird lighting situation. I was racing the sun--bind-off vs. twilight--and the sun won, so the hedge around my porch is in shadow but the sidewalk is still bright.

speaking of proportion

Proportion is a correspondence among the measures of the members of an entire work, and of the whole to a certain part selected as standard. From this result the principles of symmetry. Without symmetry and proportion there can be no principles in the design of any temple; that is, if there is no precise relation between its members as in the case of those of a well shaped man. -- Vitruvius, The Ten Books of Architecture (III, Ch. 1)

I got a new tattoo today. It's this:
I'll post real pics eventually, but it's very angry right now and not so pretty. In case you're wondering what the heck it means, it's a graphic representation of the Golden Section (golden mean, divine proportion, etc.) which you can read about here, here, or here, or if you don't feel like clicking around I can tell you that it's a visually pleasing mathematical ratio found in many natural forms as well as in art and architecture. The Pythagoreans discovered it and ye olde Greek architects as well as Renaissance types like da Vinci (Vitruvian Man for example) were fond of it. When I mentioned this tattoo idea to my sister Katie she said, "like the Pythagoreans, the secret mystical math society? That's awesome! I want one too!" which, if our mother found out and was angry about it, we could always point out is in her honor, since she is a mathematician and exposed us to way too much Donald in Mathmagicland.

Speaking of my mother finding out, my friend Amy said of my last post, "So, I was going to post the following to your blog, but wasn't sure if your parents read it: Don't worry, I'm sure you'll make it to the Beard and Moustache Riding Championships." So do my parents read my blog? Let's find out, shall we? Hey Mom! I've got three tattoos now and my friends make dirty jokes! And I love it that you, like Pythagoras, believe that numbers constitute the true nature of things, so much that I tattooed it on my arm! Holla if you hear me!

proportion

Good things about today:
1. I wore my newly-handpainted homage-to-exploding dog shoes today. White fake Vans from Target + fabric paint + a Sharpie = happy feet. (The color of the kitchen floor is awfully green in this pic--it's actually plain ol' off-white--but the color of the shoes is right on.)

2. I got a notice that I had a package waiting for me in the management office of my building, which must be my package from knitpicks with another skein of Andean Silk so that I can finally finish my Clapotis!

3. I tried several new furniture configurations in the living room to accommodate my new pink microsuede butterfly chair! (Aka the Jane Jetson chair)

4. The cat I rescued (and promptly handed off to my animal-loving rescue-expert friend Shamsi, who deserves megaprops for swooping in with her humane trap when my coworkers were talking about poisoning it) is doing better in terms of socialization, appears still to be a kitten, and may be able to be adopted out sooner rather than later. S/he let Shamsi pet him/her today. Sorry to compete with Carole in the please-take-my-kitty Olympics, but isn't he/she cute? We call him/her Chester, but you could rename. (Okay, we really have to find out its sex if only so my grammar is more clear.)

5. I finally got to watch my Grey's Anatomy season finale tape. Um, three times. Had to catch all the nuance, ya know.

Bad things about today:
1. I found out about the New York City Beard and Mustache Championships too late. (I live too far away to go anyway. Maybe someday.)

2. There was no package waiting for me in the management office! I don't know why I got that notice. I'm going to lie in wait for the mailman tomorrow and pounce. I was so disappointed. I wanted to finish my pretty clappy.

3. I didn't find a furniture constellation that actually worked, and worse, the only reason I have the Jane Jetson chair is because Bev gave it to me because she moved back to Connecticut BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

4. While checking my email this morning, I shook my Nouriche without firmly screwing on the cap and sprayed the stuff all over the place--face, hair, silk pajamas (three cheers for Tarzhay!), and (gasp) computer. I managed to wipe off the monitor pretty well but had to buy a new keyboard. (One more for the "good things column--I got to break it in with an extended instant message Grey's rehash with Amy, whose visit last weekend was awesome but too short.) One of the keyboards was "spill-resistant" so naturally I gravitated toward it but Office Depot guy said, "well, if you pour coffee on it, it's going to be ruined anyway." I resisted the urge to say, "actually it was liquid yogurt," and went with the cheaper one.

Now off to watch more taped season finales with animal-rescuer and general rock star Shamsi.

living in a whirl of gaiety

...that being a quote from one of the greatest books ever! The Ingalls' whirl of gaiety dominated the winter after the Long Winter, when everybody in town enjoyed the Literary Society meetings with such zest that Laura didn't get much studying done and feared she would never qualify as a teacher and Mary might have to leave the college for the blind. Not that I've memorized it or anything. My own personal whirl of gaiety (hee! dirty!) is dominating May: I just got back from a weekend at home in Pennsylvania, and this weekend Amy's coming to visit! (Another noteworthy event that I'm not looking forward to is Bev's going-away party. BOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Not thinking about it, except to ponder what to cook. Artichoke dip, anyone?) And to put the icing on the cake (or perhaps the frosting, since after taking that "How Dixie are you?" internet quiz and thinking way too much about it I no longer know which I naturally say), I'm almost finished with Clapotis! Yay! I'm on the last repeat before the decreases, a little panicky about running out of yarn and the fact that my clappy looks kinda short, compared to the lovely larger-than-life (literally, it's longer than she is tall) version done by Noelle, but hoping that fudging and blocking will cure those things. And frankly not caring all that much since it's pretty. Yay for soft dove gray.
And now for the traditional crappy-camera-phone pics: my nephew Ian discovers dirt roads really are made of dirt. Except when they're made of rocks. Fascinating, huh?

Aaaaaaand... supercool rockstars or giggly dorks embarrasing their mom in a department store? You be the judge.

p.s. if finishing the clap and the fact that my Grey's Anatomy season 1 DVD arrived from Netflix while I was gone is, in fact, a whirl of gaiety in my life, then "rock star" is probably not the option you want to go with when you're tested on this information later. Although Amy's visit should be pretty rockin'.

p.p.s. in case you're wondering, I'm not Dixie at all. I scored "pure Yankee." Damn right.

guess where I'm going!

...home to PA for a whirlwind weekend! I just got home from work. I am not packed, I have not eaten since breakfast, and I really need a shower. And what am I doing?

Reading blogs.

I'm bringing Clapotis and another newsboy cap on the plane with me. I don't even have a book, because I plan to either sleep or knit the whole way (right now, it's looking like sleep). Anyway. To the shower now.

fear the broccoli monster!

So I saw this childhood meme over at Bev's and decided to do it. Consider yourself tagged if you're reading.

Favorite special treat food - My mom makes these cookies, Russian tea cakes, only for Christmas. I don't even really like them, they're awfully dry (hence the "tea" suggestion, although we're not tea people and drank milk with them instead; we're also not Russian, but apparently there's no "English, Scottish, and Polish-but-really-French tea cake") and you get white powdery stuff all over your shirt and hands, but we only ate them at Christmas and that made them special.

Favorite real food - Broccoli. Seriously. My parents called me the Broccoli Monster.

Favorite thing to wear - I had a purple corduroy shirt dress, with snaps instead of buttons, when I was in second grade. That year I was in the third-grade reading class (nerd alert!) and you know how older automatically equals cooler when you're a kid? Well, in the midst of all those older, cooler kids, I got yelled at by a substitute teacher for calling out and not raising my hand. So later in the class when my stomach started feeling weird, I raised my hand and waited and waited... and threw up before she ever called on me. All over my awesome purple corduroy dress, in front of the third-graders.

Favorite place to go - the pool! My sisters and I swam competitively, summer and winter. Close runners-up: the duck pond, the library, or Dutch Wonderland.

Favorite person - Aside from my parents and sisters, of course, our next-door neighbors, an older couple from Virginia whom we called Miss Di and Mr. Harold. Miss Di was a retired hairdresser and used to cut my sisters' and my hair for free. We would go over one at a time so we could have special one-on-one time with Miss Di, who made us coffee-milk with marshmallows.

Favorite event/occasion - Christmas Eve. Better than Christmas morning because of the anticipation, the carol-singing, and not having to go to church.

Favorite pet - Heather, the cat. We adopted her when I was seven and she died when I was seventeen. She used to meet me at the bus stop after school, like a dog. She was the best.

Favorite TV show - I was so mad the day they interrupted "Darkwing Duck" to announce that Nelson Mandela had been released from prison. Well, I didn't know who he was. I was nine! I wanted my cartoon to come back on!

Favorite book - all the Little House books. True Geekiness Confessions: My family used to read them out loud around the fire in evening on camping trips. We once won the church Halloween costume pageant with our Ingalls Family costumes. My older sister was Mary, I was Laura (yay!), my little sister was Carrie (after whom, by the way, I'm named), and my mom held a dolly that was Baby Grace. More geekiness: Rose Wilder Lane, Laura's daughter, was also a novelist, among other things. I love her Old Home Town. It's a bit slow to start but the last sentence makes me cry every damn time.

If you've manged to read this far, you deserve some knitty goodness. Clapotis progress: I'm about a third of the way done, I would guess. You can see the dropped-stitch ladders on the left corner in the picture there--the weird lighting is due to the porch roof (stripes on left) and trees (general blotchiness).

I'm also up to the bust increases on my second Hourglass sweater. Speaking of which, here's the first, still un-woven-ended, still unblocked, in my bathroom mirror. It goes well with my saggy pajama pants, no? I must be crazy to be posting a picture that shows me looking both cross-eyed and mega-hipped (I swear that's the effect of the lower mirror being closer than the upper mirror! All right, no more Mamut cookies...). Also please excuse the cluttered bathroom.

by hand

So I love this handwriting meme that I've seen going around. I have a thing for handwriting. It shows so much personality. Once an old roommate and I got packages from our moms on the same day. After we ripped them open and squealed over all the awesome mom-stuff--handknit socks for her, homemade jam and a book for me--as we sat in a sea of bubble-wrap my roommate looked at the outside of her package and said, "Don't you just love your mom's handwriting?" And you know what? I really do. My dad's too. My mom's script is very even, all the letters properly proportioned (as you'd expect from a mathematician), perfectly clear, slanted and slightly angular but obviously feminine. My dad's script has huge, dramatic, sweeping capitals and a bunch of little scribbles in between--exactly what you'd expect from a writer, and a person of wide interests--a generalist, not a specialist.

My handwriting, as Amy once said of her own, is somewhere between engineer and psycho-killer.

I also have this thing about drawing squares and windows. I used to cover the margin of my notebooks with them.







In other news, I've got the clap. Yep, I jumped on the Clapotis bandwagon, after seeing the beautiful results that Noelle and Laurie got, as well as prolonged ogling of the thread on Craftster. I got some Andean Silk, color slate, and cast on yesterday. I'm already halfway through section 2 (the increases) because I sat for an hour at work yesterday (on what was supposed to be my day off, but whatevs, I didn't have to work on Easter) waiting for a computer problem to be resolved, with nothing else to do and nobody around... I'm a stealth knitter. WIP photos soon.

kelly kelly kelly kelly kelly kelly kellyyyyyy

I think I'm becoming a yarn snob, because I used acrylic for this Headline News Cabled Newsboy Cap from SNBN, and I feel sort of naughty, like I'm an uptown girl dating a downtown guy. Like Kelly and Woody on "Cheers," this hat and I are now inseparable. I used acrylic because a) I wanted some instant gratification, and nothing's more instant than standing in the aisle of Michael's deciding which is the least hideous-feeling yarn, unlike the hours I could spend at Village Wools deciding which is the most luscious, and b) it's practically summer now and wool is HOT! And all the cotton I saw was either soft, twee, dainty-English-rosebud colors or that heinous Sugar n' Cream, kitchen-yarn texture. You'll note, though, that I didn't cable it. I had a little trouble with the pattern. It says to cable every four rows, which with a 6-stitch-wide cable seemed too tight to me, so I changed it to every six rows. It also says to start decreasing after 3 cable repeats, which seemed too short to me, so I went an extra half-repeat. And the thing was still too small. Comically small. It was a red cabled yamulke. I swear. Fortunately, I am persistent in my quest for instant gratification (ha), so after emerging from the pit of despair, I dropped the newsboy yamulke into my stuff-for-Goodwill pile and cast on again, this time without cables so that it would be quicker to knit and because I saw this girl's newsboy on Craftster and liked the way it looked sans cable. (Also, someone in that thread mentions seeing Debbie Stoller on Craft Corner Deathmatch, which I have never heard of, probably because I don't have cable--hee--but am very interested in seeing. "My glue gun's hotter than your glue gun!") I didn't put plastic mesh in the brim, either, because I thought it was firm enough as it was, and I couldn't find the stuff at the store anyway. So here it is, in all its Caron SimplySoft glory. I've promised one to my sister Katie and want another one for myself, in a less-bold color... and perhaps a nicer yarn?

Nah.

fun with wikipedia.

Thanks for all the birthday wishes, guys! My friends took me to Graze, Ramona's restaurant, and we looooved it. I noticed a birthday meme going around--coincidence? I think not--at Pomo Golightly, January One, and Saving Nine, among others. The idea is to search for your birthdate, sans year, at Wikipedia and see what you come up with, then list three events, three births, and three deaths. (I'm not always really strict about following meme rules, so if I list more than three, just chalk it up to my being a supercool lawbreakin' badass and not to my inability to count.)

Events
1742 - George Frideric Handel's oratorio Messiah makes its world-premiere in Dublin, Ireland.

1861 - American Civil War: Fort Sumter surrenders to rebel forces.

1970 - An oxygen tank aboard Apollo 13 explodes, putting the crew into deadly peril. The explosion occurred on April 14th in several time zones.

Births
1519 - Catherine de Medici, wife of Henry II of France%

1743 - Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States (d. 1826) [The weird thing about this is, my parents (who have the same birthday) were born on Lincoln's birthday, my older sister was born on Patrick Henry's birthday, and my younger sister missed Washington's birthday by one day.]

1866 - Butch Cassidy, American outlaw (d. 1908)

1946 - Al Green, American singer and pastor

1949 - Christopher Hitchens, English-born journalist, critic, and author

Deaths--not a lot of people were listed as dying on my birthday, and very few that I'd actually heard of, so I picked the ones with the coolest names. Imagine if they all got group-married and hyphenated!

814 - Krum, khan of Bulgaria

1941 - Annie Jump Cannon, American astronomer (b. 1863)

1997 - Dorothy Frooks, American author, publisher, military figure, and actress (b. 1896)

2002 - Desmond Titterington, Northern Irish racecar driver (b. 1928)

"Hello, I'm Mrs. Jump Cannon-Krum-Frooks-Titterington. Call me Annie."

and the award goes to...

Noelle! Officially the world's most thoughtful person. Not only did she get me Knitorama for my birthday (from which I'm thinking I'll jump on the grenade purse--get it, jump on the grenade? hee! woo ha ha!--and the dropstitch nightgown), and lend me her Upstairs Downstairs DVD boxset, she also found this awesome snake scarf pattern and sent it to me, remembering that I had mentioned several months ago that I'd like to make a snake scarf for my nephew but had been discouraged by the thought of trying to alter the alligator-mitten pattern in SNBN to make it more snakey (and also a scarf). I liked the look of the yarn, so I went and bought the kit. Yay for a snake to wrapped around my neck! (Well, his neck.) And double yay for people who lend you awesome period-drama DVDs and send you just the pattern you've been looking for! Thank you Noelle!!!!

I finished my hourglass sweater, and one of these days I'll have to get someone to take a picture of me in it. The boatneck is a little wide, but since it's wool and I live in the sunbelt, it's not like I'm going to be able to layer it over anything but a tank top anyway. I've already started another one (at Crafty Friday--good times!) in bright green cotton. Still working on my second "circus freak" jaywalker, which one of my coworkers refers to as his (his? as if!) "pride" socks. I'm knitting a rainbow of understanding in the break room.

beautimus maximus

(Like my faux Latin?)
It's here! It's here! My beautiful, beautiful C*Eye*ber Fiber sock yarn from Mama-E arrived today, and look--isn't is luscious? Isn't it just delicious and candy-like? Don't you sort of want to bite into it? Well, don't, or I'll have to kill you, because I can't wait to knit with it. (I have a weird thing about wanting to eat things that I think are cute. Ask my sister Katie about our mutual obsession with eating babies. No, really.) The thing is, I have so many projects I'm contemplating right now, I don't know when I'm going to be able to start more socks... and I'm kind of afraid of getting something on it. It's so lovely! That's supergirl on the left and mermaids on the right.

i'm a moron

Holy crap, I completely forgot that I signed up for Stash Your Flash! Apologies to those who showed up looking for some yarnography. My stash is pathetically small, mostly because of my budget--I try not to buy yarn unless I have a project planned for it. Subtract gift WIPs, and the fact that FOs don't count, and I barely have enough stash to warrant a photo. I really only joined because I liked this button:

So instead of flashing my stash, I'm going to flash my new sewing machine! Yeah! Thanks to Noelle's hot tip re: this month's Bust and the good folks at Sears, I now own a Kenmore Mini Ultra. Here's my own hot tip: only the blue ones are on sale! The pink and the green are going to cost you like $30 more. I'm off to Hancock now, hoping they haven't closed yet, because I've heard they're having a $1 sale on McCalls (or was it Butterick? whatevs) patterns and my idea of a big bad Saturday night out involves pattern shopping. Woooo!