An Ode To The Sexiest Women Alive.

Getting shanked by Scout,
Flashing the great Kaffe Fasset,
They're nuts, but GREAT fun!

When I first started downloading the Lime & Violet podcast, I wasn't too sure I'd stick with it. Granted, these two women have awesome taste in fiber and color and know more about what to do with each than I probably ever will. But they're... well... nuts. Some of their antics border on the insane or the illegal. And brother, can they ever talk. But after 2 or 3 listens, I can't help but look forward to giggling quietly (quietly, because I always listen to my knitting podcasts at work and if I laugh out loud too much people will think that I'm having a great time developing really complicated Java applications and we wouldn't want them thinking that, now would we?) at their stories, feeling as if I'm in on the joke and not stuck on the outskirts somewhere. Someday, when I'm a famous knitting blogger and I've got a hit count that rivals this one, I want to be interviewed by Lime & Violet. Give them a listen.

Quick Status Update.

Ooooooohhhh. I've got a screaming headache that just won't go away. I should be used to these, since I get them at least once a month and they last from 3 - 5 days, but man, they really get in the way of my knitting. And my reading. And my blogging. And my life in general.

(No, prescription meds haven't worked. Yes, they're hormonal, although I'm not convinced that they're migraines. They're more like sinus headaches. Yes, I've tried loading up on caffeine/chocolate, but to no avail.)

My mom's sock is slowly getting there. As I've whined before, the K2P2 rib part takes so friggin' long, but once that's done, it'll go much faster. Good thing, too, because if I don't get going on at least one of my stash projects soon, it'll go by the wayside as a certain Cabled Tunic takes over my life. And to make matters worse, I got my copy of Vogue Knitting Winter 2007/08 in the mail today, and oh... my... gawd. The shawls. The cabled sweaters. The tweeds. So beautiful. So impossible to choose just one.

OK, gonna go rest my head a little before Baby A.K. escapes from her room and demands attention... doh! Too late! She's calling me from the stairs... !

Merry Christmas, Everyone.

The Dora Blanket is finished. Actually, I finished it two days ago.

I was elated when Baby A.K. unwrapped it and exclaimed, "Oh Mommy, my new blankie! Thank you! Thank you!"

I'm working diligently on Mom's second sock. Luckily, she loves the first one - tried it on and everything. But I'm happy to say that now that the bulk of the holiday knitting is done, I can finally go back to knitting for #1 for awhile. I've got only two projects in the queue, but there's a good chance that at least one of them will take a back seat to... a certain cabled tunic of my acquaintance. More on that later. Now I'm going to kick back and look through one of my Christmas gifts, from the wonderful Husband of A.K.

Careening Towards The Finish Line.

The sock is done!

The fake Mobius (as worn by Curious George) is done!

The Dora The Explorer Blanket is NOT done!

MUST... KEEP... KNITTING... !!!!

Crunch Time.

Very short post today, my friends. I'm very tired from what's been a long week at work (although last night's S&B was a very welcomed break from the madness), but I can't rest until I've done some gift knitting. The second fake Mobius scarf is blocking, my mom's sock is 98% finished (yes, you read correctly: sock. Singular. She'll get the other one after the holiday rush.), and Baby A.K.'s Dora The Explorer blanket is half done. Must... keep... knitting. Must... not... sleep... yet.

Hope everyone else is done with their knitted gifts. Next year, I'm giving out gift cards.

My Perfect Day.

I've waited a long time for this day to come, and it came and went perfectly. Let me tell you about My Perfect Day.

First off, My Perfect Day probably had a lot to do with the fact that I wasn't working. After carefully checking my work schedule, today turned out to be the best day to use up a spare vacation day so I could get stuff done.

What kind of stuff? The first thing on My Perfect Day's agenda was... shopping. It was time to go get some Christmas gifts for Baby A.K., and the only way to do that surreptitiously was to do it while she was in daycare. Keep in mind, Baby A.K. is half Jewish (from me), and half Catholic (from daddy, natch), so basically, the list of gifts we're giving her were divided in half for each of the holidays. Time to go get that other half. It took a good hour and a half to go through the entire toy store and find what I wanted, but... mission accomplished.

The next thing to do on My Perfect Day: have lunch with Husband. We used to have lunch during the week all the time, before Baby A.K. was born and we had time and money to do so. Not so much of either anymore, so these little pockets of time are highly anticipated and appreciated. We had a leisurely lunch at this pub, wandered around downtown a bit, then as he headed back to work, I headed off to...

Knit. You knew it was coming, didn't you? I went home, set up my laptop for optimal podcast-listening, grabbed my needles and dug in. The second Katia Nordic Print scarf is now finished, except for the blocking and sewing to become a fake Mobius (BTW, the other Katia scarf I made a few days ago really did want to be a fake Mobius. It came out exactly as I wanted - you'll see the results soon. I want to photograph it in daylight. But it'll be in the mail to its recipient early next week.). Then I worked on my mom's socks... and I'm happy to report that I must be getting somewhere, because as of this writing, I only have a half inch to go until I can start the heel flap. OK, that's still kind of lame, given the amount of time I've been working on it, but for me, it's all about milestones, and this is a big one when you're K2P2-ing around and around on size 1 DPNs until your fingers want to take their own vacation day somewhere far away from you.

Husband and Baby A.K. arrived home around 5:00 pm, at which time I was halfway done making dinner. This, believe it or not, was actually next on the Perfect Day list. I love to cook, but haven't done much of it in the past 2 years because up until recently, Baby A.K. would be underfoot too much to let me cook in relative peace (good thing Husband likes to cook, too, because he's been doing most of it). Now she can entertain herself for at least 15 minutes at a clip, so I can capitalize on that and make something a little more interesting than microwaveable chicken fingers.

So now, Baby A.K. is fast asleep. Husband is out playing a gig with the rockin' ska band he's in. As I finish this post, I'm looking forward to a quiet night of more podcasts and more sock knitting.

And that is what I call A Perfect Day.

Welcome, Interstate Ravelers.

Let's go back in time to Thanksgiving. We all gathered at my mom's house for her annual feast that could've easily fed the Eastern seaboard. After said feast, my SIL and I found ourselves chatting, and I happened to mention Ravelry.

     "What's Ravelry?" she asked.

Well, I couldn't believe it. She hadn't yet heard about Ravelry from her patrons, staff, or anything. Granted, she's a busy woman - running her own business and tending to the whims of my adorable niece - but I mean... it's R-A-V-E-L-R-Y. I worked fast so as to beat out the tryptophan comas we would all eventually succumb to: I whipped out my laptop and gave her a tour of Ravelry. As impressed as she was by the site itself and everything you could do on it, I think the thing that excited her the most was that a few of us out there linked our yarn purchases to her store. We immediately got her onto the waiting list.

As of 2 or 3 days ago, Florydori is now among the hip, cool, and terminally addicted knitters of Ravelry. Please, my friends, go out there and give her profile and projects a look-see. She hasn't had a lot of time to upload projects and photos, but keep watching - her FOs, many of which are her own creations, are just gorgeous.

(Super-wicked-mega bonus points to anyone who knows where the title of this post came from.)

Better Now.

Sorry, sorry, sorry... I took a long weekend off to recuperate from this latest illness. Bad blogger. Bad!

I don't know if it was my last post or sheer boredom from sitting around waiting to get better, but I got a good jump on my holiday knitting in the last 72 hours. Baby A.K.'s Dora The Explorer blanket is underway, and I gotta say... it looks SO beautiful! And yes, this is kind of surprising to me - hot pink, electric purple, and bright orange are most definitely NOT the colors I'd normally choose for a blanket. You see, whenever I've knit this blanket pattern, I've always chosen light, airy pastels. It always seemed to me that a knitted baby blanket was sure to become somebody's heirloom someday, and all good heirlooms are in soft, dreamy colors that are timeless and classic and go with everything. Baby A.K.'s blanket was going to be different, but oy vey, those colors... ! I had my doubts. But I'm here to say, it looks gorgeous. Blended together, the colors don't look as garish as they sound - they just make for a bold, happy blanket well suited for my bold, happy toddler. It'll be one of her Christmas gifts.

As I type this, one of the Katia Nordic Print scarves is drying on my beautiful new blocking board. My goal is for it to become a fake Mobius scarf, but I'm not sure it wants to be a fake Mobius scarf. It knit up beautifully - the stitch definition is wonderful, and the colorway (blues, purples, greens) is so... me. Since this is a gift, and I really couldn't spend a fortune on it, the goal was to make this scarf using just one skein. I might have needed two. And I might have considered using a size smaller needle. And I probably should've made it a bit thinner. Well... not much to do about it now. I'll take it off the blocking board after I post this and see what it wants to become.

I'm still plugging away at my mom's Koigu socks. For the adult socks I've done so far, I've used size 2 DPNs, which work out fine, although I've found that they turn out just a tad big. So for my mom's, I thought I'd use size 1 DPNs. I think they'll fit much better, but man, I feel every single stitch. These are taking forever... can one needle size down make this big a difference? And another thing: any DPN smaller than a 2 should be metal. For me, at least.

One good thing about all this holiday knitting: at the end of it, I get to go back to knitting for me again.

Blah.

Blah. Blah. Blah. I don't feel well. I'm exhausted from whatever it is I've caught from Baby A.K. this time, from chasing Baby A.K. around the house with all her Hanukkah excitement, from a long day of work and a very short day of knitting. I've felt so blah these past few days that I really haven't gotten much knitting done at all. I don't even have that much holiday knitting to do in the first place, but I sure as heck am not getting it done now. As soon as I'm done complaining here I'm going to bed.

Actually, I'm going to read for a bit first. I'm re-reading this book that seems to be making quite a splash these days. I first read it just before it was released (that was one of the perks of working for Barnes & Noble), and it was utterly engrossing. It still is, no matter how much controversy may be surrounding it. What's everyone else reading these days?

One Down, Too Many To Go.

Baby blanket for daycare teacher is finished.


And let us all say, AMEN.

It slowly dawned on me while I was finishing this thing up (and, by the way, I had plenty of yarn to get the job done. Whew.) that it's December, and I've got to get busy on my gift knitting. I've got those Koigu socks for my mom (which may not actually count as a gift, since she paid for the yarn. What am I saying... ? Of course it's a gift.), 2 Mobius scarves, and another blanket like the one above for Baby A.K. This should be do-able, even with all sorts of craziness in my schedule this month, but you know how it is. Something always goes awry. Here's hoping that all our holiday knitting gets done, with our sanity intact and our wrists free of carpal tunnel syndrome.