Putter Putter

I cooked up some laundry detergent (using Redshirt Knitting's "Bucket of White Slime" directions), and afterwards discovered that I had added about a half-gallon or so more water than I should have, so we'll find out tomorrow if it's too diluted to be any good.  On the bright side, even if it is I'm only out about 97 cents, plus small amounts of borax and washing soda.  If all of my cooking mishaps were this cheap I wouldn't lament them so much (the several pounds of stew meat that I've mangled trying to freeze and thaw come to mind . . .).

In the process I learned:

1) Grating soap is much less difficult than I thought it would be.  Much like grating cheese.  Somewhat relaxing.

2) Soap takes a long time to melt, or I have a really short attention span.  Probably the latter.

The really big news of the day is that I found my iPod!  It's only been missing for two years now!  It was in one of my knitting bags.  I was cleaning the living room (stop laughing), and I was about to put a half-finished afghan into the bag when I looked down and saw the little plastic pouch.

My heart skipped a beat.  I picked it up with shaking hands.  I looked at Silas, and asked him in a voice tense with emotion, "Do you know what this is?"  He looked at me, decided I wasn't going to give him anything to chew on, and went back to playing with a toy golf ball.  I leaped up and grabbed my phone, and texted Ryan, who shared in my enthusiasm a little more.  My iPod!  My music!  No more jumping from radio station to radio station searching for something palatable!  No more aggravated attempts to tune out the shouting of my coworkers in the lounge!  It's a tiny room, people!  Your audience can hear you without having to bellow!













I am so happy right now.

The background is the somewhat-less-than-successful attempt at a log cabin Moderne Baby Blanket (from the pattern book in the previous picture (Mason-Dixon Knitting by Kay Gardiner and Ann Shay)).  As it turns out, individual colors of RHSS work up at different gauges.  It also turns out that I really hate log cabin afghans.  Mindless knitting isn't really mindless if you have to keep checking the pattern to see if you can FINALLY change colors.

It's UFO Thursday, so I picked out a few more stitches on this infernal thing.

I am getting no pleasure out of this project.  A coworker gave me the yarn (Red Heart Sashay) a few weeks before it exploded in popularity, and as I'm not a scarf-wearing type of person for the most part, and I remain generally uninspired by the legions of ruffled scarves being paraded past my desk, I decided to try something a little more offbeat and make a circular shawl.  It's taken many, many attempts to get it to work, and it's only my commitment to the finished object and baffling my coworker with its awesomeness that keeps me going.

No, I don't know why it really matters, but I've never let that stop me in the past.

Getting Back to Normal (or something like it)

I checked my email today, and discovered that there were a couple comments on my xanga.  "Really?" I thought.  "Someone still reads that?"

They turned out to be vague and spammish, but I took the opportunity to read over some of my old entries, and then I clicked over to Ravelry and it felt strangely empty.  Somehow a life full of knitting doesn't quite compare to how a life full of writing used to feel.  I'm not sure what I want to do in the face of that realization.

I was sick yesterday.  I was amused to note that part of it was really nice (the part where I got to stay in bed and read knitting magazines while sipping Sprite while in the distance I could hear my husband vacuuming and playing patty-cake with Silas), the rest was about what you'd expect - writhing in agony on the bathroom floor in between bouts of dry heaving and the horrible-yet-glorious-relief of actually throwing up.

Today I feel much better, and I am looking forward with great anticipation to eating something other than soda crackers and chicken broth.

I finally, finally, finally finished my Belle Ruffle fingerless gloves last month.

I wore them out on Saturday with my new purple coat and the paisley scarf Amber gave me eons ago and I felt very colorful and uniquely styled.  Indeed, while I was standing in line at the cafe in BAM! I looked around and thought, "For once in my life, I think I might fit in to a scene."  Of course, then I took my iced chai and my copy of VogueKnitting, stripped off my coat and gloves, and used the scarf as a nursing cover up, got lots of funny looks from the college crowd, and the feeling kind of dissipated.  A few minutes later Ryan got out of Best Buy and tapped on the window, and Silas's face lit up and they waved and cooed at each other while I improvised the scarf into a kind of sling so that I could carry the heaviest baby in the world on my hip without collapsing from the effort (he's getting so big!), and I mused that being a creative Mom with a happy baby and a great husband was an even better feeling.

As we were checking out at the bookstore the cashier gushed over how pretty and cool the gloves were, too, so my day was officially made.

On the needles right now I have a baby dress that I was mostly making for the sheer joy of making a tiny dress, and tentatively it was going to be for one friend's new baby girl if I could complete it before she'd outgrow it, but then I found out that my friend Angel is having a baby girl in a few months, which gives me time not only to finish this dress (optimistically), but also hopefully to make some accessories to go with it, because I've had my eye on a couple baby patterns from Jane Austen Knits, Fall 2012 . . .

I made Silas a pair of fingerless gloves because his hands are often freezing, and because the whimsy of making teeny tiny fingerless gloves is not lost on me, but thus far he refuses to wear them.  He cries when I try to put them on him, and he'll pull them off with his teeth as soon as he gets the chance.  I'm debating whether it's worth weaving in the ends and blocking them.  They are very darn cute.

I made a little progress on my snowflake afghan, and then ran out of yarn, so that's back on the back burner for now.  I spent way too much at the LYS a few days ago; there will be no more yarn for a good long time. My stash is looking pretty comfortable right now compared with my queue, and I'm thinking if I can get my sewing machine back from storage that I might delve into some non-yarn related projects for a change of pace.  I've been in the kitchen more lately and I could really use a couple of aprons.