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.