Starts and ends

I'm onto the cuff of the second of the Grasshopper socks. Whoo hoo! It must go faster. My car is in the shop so I am taking the metro to work. That's 40 minutes of knitting time!

I have finished with the knitting of the Shelridge Farm sweater. Here's a picture of it before I did up the raglan seams:

Not too interesting here. I have finished the raglan seams and had started on the arm seams but I couldn't get it to work out right. One side kept being longer than the other. I think I'm going to take some time this weekend and sit down, baste, and then seam.

I also started a new knitting project. I am a big fan of Joan McGowan-Michael, the woman behind White Lies Designs, knitting patterns that are classic and elegant and just a little bit sexy.

It's the start of a little something that most people won't see me wearing in person.

The second of the pair

The second of the pair
Originally uploaded by jyiu7

Yup, I started it. See the little martini charm I'm using for the stitch marker? I've been wanting to make my friend some socks and was given the go ahead. But since I told myself that I can not start a new pair of socks until I finished this second one...I got started.

Labr Day Monday

Next set of house work pictures are here. I pulled up the carpets Saturday afternoon. Found a lot of beads on the floor. Overall it was quick work. I also included a picture of the wall sockets. It's one of my major annoyances about this house. You can tell which rooms I've worked through because those rooms don't have socket plates. I've taken them and thrown it out because previous inhabitants painted over the plates. There are layers of paint so I have to take a knife and cut it away from the paint on the walls. I will be replacing all of the plates in this house slowly. And when I am done, I will be calling in an electrician for a couple of jobs and having him replace every socket in this house that is covered with paint.

I also realized I was a bit over ambitious to have this entire room done this weekend. I guess it wouldn't be so bad if I weren't running and biking this weekend or getting together with people...but it's still a lot. So I think I'll be painting next week and playing with trim.

Saturday afternoon progress report

When you start a workout with the Nike+ system, you can choose "Basic" (run until you tell it to stop), "Time" (set a time goal, say, work out for an hour), "Distance" (I want to run 10 miles today), or "Calories" (I feel like burning 2000 calories today). Under the "Distance", there is a preset group of distances (think your average race distances) along with a custom option. I was thinking, as I crawled out of bed this morning, that 12 miles might be a good distance. But when I went to go set my work out, I was too lazy to take the extra 30 seconds to go to custom and instead just picked "Half Marathon". 13.1 miles...close enough to 12. Conclusion of the run. My body was fine through 12 miles. I pushed myself through the last 1.1 mile. Ow I hurt.

And now, I go tackle the carpets. Experience from my room has taught me a bit and I had 13.1 miles to plot out exactly how to execute the plan today. Seriously, I spent the run thinking "I will pull up carpet today. Must stop by Home Depot on the way home to get some paint color samples. Should take no more than 4 hours to get all carpets, tack strips up and the floor cleaned. I can slap on a layer of primer tonight and paint when I wake up in the morning. And I shouldn't bother showering immediately when I get home cuz the carpet padding and dust is just going to stick to a nice showered body so I might as well stay dirty." Yeah, so all you people, stay away from me today!

Weekend goals

It's Labor Day weekend! I have 3 days off, though I'll probably have to monitor work slightly. Whee! I thought I'd make a list of things I'd like to accomplish this weekend, just so I have a reminder.

• Run 10+ miles Saturday mornining


• Bike the full Mt. Vernon trail


• Get my entire yarn stash into pictures so they can be loaded into ravelry


• Organize the larges batches of beads


• Start putting all my necklaces up on etsy. Yup, that's right all. The ones I don't want to part with might be marked a little higher...but that's cuz I don't want to part with them as much


• probably a little much but pull up the carpet in the room upstairs with the yarn and beads

If I can do all of that, I think I will be happy.

Labradorite Earrings

Labradorite Earrings
Originally uploaded by jyiu7

And sometimes, I just need new jewelry.

A border on the pinwheel sweater

A border on the pinwheel sweater
Originally uploaded by jyiu7

I figured that I should probably post a progress picture on something to do with fiber. I mean, I still owe you people socks of my finished Monkey socks knit with Schaefer Anne! This is the Pinwheel Sweater. The crochet border feels like it's taking forever. I have been working on it while surfing ravelry.

Finally!

FinishedOrchid
Originally uploaded by jyiu7

After making 4 other orchids (Anne, Amber, Beth, Bead Obsessions), the 5th one is mine. This is the one that is shown in the orchid instructions. Class is Saturday. Pattern will become available on the site on Sunday. Before this year is through, there will be at least one more orchid. Next in queue is one for my friend Reshma.

Orange Julius Anyone?

Chill Out at Orange Julius. Aug 18,19,25,26. Saturday, noon to 4. Sunday 1 to 4. Free smoothie!

Things you can do with duct tape

Fun with duct tape. My house one of these days? Who wants in?

Knitting...a sweater!

I finally figured out why I've been so uninspired with knitting all summer. It's because I wasn't knitting with wool! So, I restarted the Mom's Lace Sweater from Shelridge Farms and have been happily knitting away for a week. I've finished the back and am now working on the front. After that, I've got the two sleeves then I knit the collar and seam.

When I originally started this, I was concerned about the raglan seam because my row gauge was a little tighter than what the pattern called for. I think I've got it calculated out correctly. The worst that would happen is that I'd have to reknit the raglan decreases and remove some rows...which is fine because then I would have leftover yarn rather than attach more yarn for a couple of rows.

What's hidden under that carpet?

This weekend's fun included pulling up the carpet in my bedroom. When I bought this place, I knew that there was hardwood floors underneath all the carpeting (except in the basement). I knew that one of the things I wanted to do was pull up all the carpeting upstairs, I had just never quite gotten around to it. When I painted the room a couple of years ago, I had left a purple ring on the carpet where I had accidentally dropped the lid to the paint can. Oops. Recently, I had gotten sick of the carpet. I also have long hair so the ones that fall off add to the carpet. There's a layer of hair on the carpet that I picked out a couple of weeks ago. Eww. So...in the beginning, we had:


And I worked my way across the room. I was going to pull it up in 3 strips and after I did the first one, I realized that the roll of carpet was too big for me to move on my own so I cut that in half and created 2 rolls. I decided that I was probably better off cutting it up into 6 pieces instead of just 3, especially with the bed in the way.

After starting into the middle third, I could start to see large expanses of floor. It was starting to look good.


That's one of the "finished" pictures where you can see the floor. Not bad eh? I think eventually, I will have someone come in and refinish all the floors. You can see score lines where they cut the carpet padding (insert mad Judy here) and there are a few nicks on the floor. But over all it's in good condition. Now I'm waiting for Monday night when I can put the rolls of carpet out for the trash. I think what I would like to do next to the room is to add some shoe mouding and some crown molding. After that, I will hang some pictures and decorate some more.

Thankfully, the weather cooperated so that it was a nice cool 80 something degrees this weekend and not too humid. I could keep the windows open to let the room breathe. My eyes and lungs were a bit irritated by Saturday night and also due to all the dust, I ended up taking a shower and avoiding entering the room. I slept in the basement last night. The futon is not comfortable to sleep on if you don't open it out into a bed.

You can see the rest of the pictures here

Yes, I'm slowly settling in. I just realized that this month makes it 3 years in this house. That's the longest I've kept an address in the last 10 years.

Mmm...watermelon

The stone is an ocean jasper. It was given to my by Patricia a year ago from her trip to Quebec. I didn't know what to do with it for a long time but one day it came to me after seeing some watermelon tourmaline in her shop. I love (LOVE LOVE LOVE) the watermelon tourmaline. Those would be the pink stones that make up the bracelet. I have a 6 inch wrist. It is a beauty and it is not for sale.

Weekend in Philadelphia

My aunt normally resides in Switzerland but she usually makes it to the US on business at least once a year. This year, she was in Philly. Philly is 2 hours away so I took the train to visit. Pictures can be found here. At the end, you also see the new additions to my yarn stash. I got some GGH Silk (sport weight) for $4 a ball. It was originally $20 a ball, but it was on clearance at 80% off. Whoo hoo! I see some silk sleeveless tops in my future!

Another month, another necklace

Yes, I am very exhausted, but I've finished this necklace for tomorrow. It is going to an old family friend. She's like another aunt to me and has known my father since the two of them were in high school. It's been a long time. She's only in the country for another week or so, and in this area for one last weekend.



How do I part with this? Dunno. Never really got emotionally attached, I guess.

In other news, I haven't been knitting much. Instead, I decided to take a break from the endless ball of alpaca and work on 4 oz of a merino/silk blend from Lisa Souza. It's the "Shave Ice" colorway. I divided the 4 oz into 2 sections length wise and am going to do a 2 ply.

The riders are doing it, why can't I?

In in news of the TdF, it was an exciting week. Heck, no, not on the course! Two teams were pulled out for positive drug tests and one man (the leader!) was fired by his team and pulled out for suspicious activity! Me, I did a crochet cast off of my pinwheel jacket and started in on the first row of crocheting. My wrist is starting to act up again and at this rate, I will also need some steroids...

Continuing with the Monkey socks

Yes, I keep this sock in my purse. We had a fire drill at work today so Svitlana and I walked ourselves to Starbucks to get a drink and found a nice bench to sit at and wait out the fire drill. I, of course, pulled the sock out of my bag only to find that one of the needles had been pulled out so I spent my time putting the stitches back on the needle before we were able to go back inside.

Hockey fan!

This made me smile on the way home one night. Another hockey fan out in the open:

What is it with all the people from Buffalo? There's a lot of them here in DC!

From earlier this week

Sunday, I was down in Charlottesville taking the amaryllis class with Donna at Studio Baboo. I was incredibly tired but I did remember to take a picture of the new pattern:


Monday night was knitting at Clarendon. I met up with Anne (blogless) and we had dinner and shared this dessert called the Chocolate Coma:

It was REALLY good.

Continuing saga of the beads

My phone rang this morning. I was hoping it was from someone I'd wanted to hear from. Well, sort of. It was someone I wanted to hear from with something I didn't quite want to hear. It was a woman from UPS calling to say that yes, your package was supposed to have gone to Alexandria but we never pulled it off the truck so she just wanted to let me know that it was going back for delivery TO MY HOUSE AGAIN! ARG! Also, they were really sorry for the mistake. Well, I really appreciated the attention to detail and the phone call. So, I told her that if I don't manage to intercept the UPS guy and that package goes back to the shipping office, send it to Alexandria. I came home at lunch on a day when I put more code into production and we had network problems of all sorts to wait for the f-ing UPS man. I don't think he usually receives as excited a greeting as he did today when I opened the door and saw the brown uniform. So FINALLY, I have those beads for the amaryllis...which btw, is life size.

Other general administrative things

This


and this


will be going to etsy Monday night.

Pinwheel Jacket - TdFKAL update

I knit enough to be able to separate out the sleeves on Thursday. I was a bit tired so it took some dedicated alone time at home to be able to do the provisional cast on they had in the instructions:


Yes, it is just a circle clump that's just getting bigger.

More beads that I have forgotten about

So I have a room upstairs in my house that has most of my beads. By most, I'd put that at about 90%. Tomorrow I am going down to Studio Baboo to take the French Beaded Amaryllis class with Donna DeAngelis Dickt. I got a heads up last week that this required 20 hanks of beads for the flower itself. Yes, my jaw did drop to the floor when I saw that. The peony was only 8 hanks of beads. Um, yeah. So I called up to Margola on Monday and ordered myself 3 master hanks of 9/0 3 cuts. 3 master hanks = 30 regular size hanks. Due to the package requiring of an actual human signature and a snafu with those bastards at UPS, I will be getting my beads next Tuesday when someone (probably Helena) signs for them at Bead Obsessions. Yeah...this is AFTER my class. So, I went hunting in my bead stash and found that well, I have about 24 hanks of size 11/0 jet lined ruby, 19 hanks of 3 cut jet lined ruby that looks more like a jet lined topaz, and 20 hanks of this one red, but they're of two different dye lots. I think I'm going to bring them all down with me tomorrow and see if they have another bag to match one of the off dyelots. Those would be the two bags stacked on top of each other in the bottom half of the picture.

I went biking on Sunday!

And took a few pictures. I really really love watching the planes land at National:


And scenes of the DC skyline



This last picture is a picture up King St. To my left is the Starbucks on King St. that's down by the water. I decided to take some Yarn Harlot type pictures but instead of the traveling sock, it would be my bike. This is another one of my favorite things - empty city streets early in the morning before everyone really gets up.

Red glass cab necklace

Red glass cab necklace
Originally uploaded by jyiu7

Mine, mine, all mine!

Chinese tourquoise necklace - finished
Originally uploaded by jyiu7

Chinese tourquoise necklace - finished

I missed free food

I totally missed free ice cream at Haagen Dazs in May! It was free scoops of new flavors! I'll have to put this on the mental free food calendar to check next year! Found it on one of my usual forums. Appropriately, my friend who posted it said, "Judy must be asleep..."

Quick Monday Update

Mystery Stole 3

I've finished the second clue. Yippee! I'll post a picture...tomorrow?

TdF Knit Along, and general TdF thoughts

Gotta love looking at those nice cyclist legs! My Pinwheel Jacket circumference is now more than 24 inches which means I have moved to the 24 inch circs and regular sized needles! Yippee, again! And this first ball is lasting quite a while! I've got about 21 stitches between each marker (8 marker total) and when I get to about 40 stitches between each marker, I can compare it to see if it spans my back so I can seperate out the sleeves. While doing all this, I am watching and enjoying the TdF. There is no clear winner this year but it's still entertaining. I took the bike out yesterday and decided that the bike is going to stay in the car cuz I may be taking a lot of the obsessiveness out while on the bike. I don't think that means that I'll be watching any less of the TdF. Whee!!!

What have I done in the last 7 days?

I started a spiral strap for the red glass cabochon that I have gone and reset. The original necklace was one of my first efforts and the glass piece could fal out very easily:


Then, I started on a new necklace. This one is all for me. Earlier this week, it looked like this:

Now, it looks like this:

I still need to weave in a few ends. I wore this out yesterday without the fringe to get a feel for it and it definitely needed fringe. But as I started putting the fringe on, I wasn't sure how I felt about it. I think it's okay now.

Then there was July 4th. I live here by the nation's capital and work over in Rosslyn, VA in Arlington. My parking spot at work is about 1.5 miles from the Memorial Bridge. The Memorial Bridge is the bridge between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery. So I went to a cookout, and then drove into work with some friends and went down by the river to catch the DC fireworks. The square structure is the Lincoln and the tall thing is the Washington Monument.

I also FINALLY got around to weaving in the ends from the Flower Meadow Shrug. I still don't know how I feel about shrugs, but this one certainly keeps me warm!
 

I've also been chugging away at the Mystery Stole. Clue 2 is pretty easy and it feels like I'm flying through it. I did about 10 rows Friday night and another 16 or so rows yesterday.

And finally...

Tour de France!

Yes, it's that time again when I begin to obsessively watch the Tour de France (TdF). I've even joined the TdF Knit Along and I'll be knitting the Lara Pinwheel Sweater from elann. I got started yesterday with the Prologue:

It's a circle jacket in cotton. I started on dpns and was able to move onto a 16 in circ that I remembered I have. So yeah, watching the TdF makes me want to go ride a bike. So much so that I'm skipping the morning presentation to go out riding by the Potomac! I can watch the Primetime showing :)

Sometimes, one gets a little obsessed

Design and construction. You must understand how to build it, come up with a design that fits your parameters, and then go. It can be a piece of clothing, or a house, or a beaded flower, or software. It doesn't matter. You need to see the vision and understand how it needs to be built first. Then, you can pass go and collect $200.

I've often times complained about a lack of talent in the 2D arts. I can't draw. I have no interest in flat peyote stitch. But you've all see the necklaces and flowers I'll design and make.

For me, it never really seems to be a slow understanding. When it clicks, it clicks and the light bulb turns on bright. That happened this week for me with the OS Commerce software I use on the shopping cart for the flower patterns and the use of CSS. CSS = Cascading Style Sheets.

I've known of this website for a long time. It's called Zen Garden. It's really quite amazing if you go in and dig around. The concept behind it is simple. You have a basic html page, with each section enclosed in a div with an identifier. Using a style sheet and some artistic talent, you can rearrange that page to your heart's desire. It's a call to graphic artists out in the world to learn to use style sheets to really make the technology work for you. You're no longer hardcoding. Today you feel happy, so we'll plug in the happy style sheet. Tomorrow, you feel like crap and you plug in the dark and dreary style sheet. The presentation is different but the contents is the same. We now return to the software model of model/view/controller.

Wow...I'm really having a moment here. I think I need to talk to some computer people a little more. Anyways, go check out Zen Garden. It's really amazing.

With the inspiration and the light bulb in the on position, I started the first step in the makeover of the websites at Judy Yiu Designs. The shop is based on a preexisting template. I hope to make the main website something that is modifiable with CSS, but that will take a little longer as I try to figure out what I want it to look like, and study the various Zen Garden examples some more.

On the eve of another class...

• I'm sitting here wading through the 50 bazillion emails generated from Mystery Stole 3. I have also printed out Chart 2 twice. The first copy was taped together incorrectly...confirming my suspicions that I'm basically useless on a Friday night.


• I'm feeling very clean and exfoliated because I left early this afternoon and went to Sugarhouse Day Spa in Old Town Alexandria and got the Sugar House Scrub. It was my first time for a body scrub and it felt really nice. It's quite amazing that I'm staring at my arms and feel that I can see the difference! One of these days, I would love to go away for a weekend to some spa.


• After the scrub, I went to Bead Obsessions to pick up a couple of things and say hi to Loretta and found out that I've got 5 students in class tomorrow for the intro flowers class and one is even trekking down from Philadelphia! For all of you non east coasters, Philadelphia is something of a 3 hour drive away from DC...maybe 100-150 miles.

Hmm...unfinished things...

I've been entering projects into my ravelry account and I seem to have more unfinished objects than I'd care to. Wait, I think I have weaved the ends into Flaming Moth...and since it's gigantic unblocked, I don't know if I really need to block it. If I block it, I could probably use it as a lap blanket...except for the fact that it's triangular. And then there's Charlotte's Web. I need to add the fringe on and block. Yes, fringe makes the piece. And I've got two socks (Monkey and Grasshopper) on the needles as well as 2 shawls (Maple Leaf and MS3), though in my defense, I can't finish MS3 cuz only the designer, pinklemontwist knows what this thing looks like and she's only given us 1 clue (2nd clue coming soon!). I should go to sleep and stop trying to organize my knitting life.

In trying to relax

I got to dog sit for a couple of hours this weekend. I found out where Braidy's favorite spot in the house is:


I've got floor to ceiling windows in the living room. She's sitting on the back of the couch looking out one window and there's another one behind her.

I had a hard time working through the stole over the weekend but was better able to concentrate yesterday and today. I needed some rest. I finished Clue #1 tonight. Now I await Friday and Clue #2.

Wow

I saw this and went..."Hmm, one could use 2 shawls inspired by peacocks..."

Weight slowly lifting

I guess I over schedule myself. Work has been hectic. In addition, I've been trying to get another orchid out in the span of a week and that added to it. I would wake up and have a headache within an hour and go to work. I'd come home from work, take a quick nap and continue with the orchid and my head would continue to hurt. Well, work is still...work, but the orchid is done. I spent most of the day today at Bead Obsessions working on the orchid and just hanging out and socializing in a non workplace environment. I needed that because I haven't been able to get out because I've had to be some place where I could work on it. So, the finished piece is now at the shop. Class is scheduled for August 25, 2007 (Saturday). I will be sending the pattern to my two testers in the next day or so.


I also knitted a little on a Monkey< for myself in Schaefer Anne:
This is just the first sock

I also started in on Mystery Shawl 3. I actually started last night with black (Toho #49) hex beads but they blended in with the yarn too well. My initial instinct had been to go with this pewter/gunmetal colored hex bead that I thought I had. But I didn't have any, until today, when I was at the shop:


While I was at the shop, Patricia was playing with some earrings and that inspired me to make some earrings with the silver beads because well, all I had was the knitting! So while I was looking at beads for the earrings, I saw the silver curved tubes and remembered that I had been wanting to make another bangle bracelet, so I did both:


This is basically the bangle bracelets and beginning earrings class at Bead Obsessions. It was quick and easy and just what I needed.

So after all of that, I came home and took another nap, and my brain doesn't quite feel like it's just in seizure mode, but just a little bit. It's getting better. Tomorrow is a force 4 hours in front of the ultimate brain musher...the new tv :)

Venting

A little quiet this week, been busy at work. But right now, I'm not venting about work. Lesson learned today: It's a good thing I religiously check my credit card account balances every week.

This morning, I looked just to see exactly how much damage I did over the weekend at Home Depot. I'm scanning through the list of recent charges and see a charge of $435.27 to Amazon.com and go, "hmmm, what did I buy for $435.27?" I left it alone because I thought maybe the amazon.com was a place holder name for something to be determined since it was my amazon.com credit card. I checked again tonight because it still nagged at me and no. Okay, so, I spent money on a new tv...but that was on a different credit card. I spent money at Home Depot and Ikea, but each of those charges were for < $100. I can't say the same for the total, but I did make a lot of trips to Home Depot. So, gee, it's not like me to not remember what I spent $400 on, especially when it looks like I bought it a couple of days ago! I called up the credit card company and they said, "No, we don't use amazon.com as a placeholder. It really is a charge to amazon.com. You'll need to talk to them." So, I called them and found out that someone ordered a Sony Handycam. Just the words "SONY HANDYCAM" told me that I definitely did not order it. You can all read my incoherent post on photographs and I can tell you it applies even more so to video capture. I personally see no point in video capture because you are pretty much wasting moments of your life reliving other moments of your life. Time that you can spend doing something else productive. And you end up with more crap to lug around. So thankfully, amazon was able to track this order and saw that it was going to Springfield, VA but was undeliverable and is on its way back to the warehouse. I've told the cc company to change my account...and man...well...I had beady things to do tonight but I may just go to sleep now.

Unauthorized use of your credit card. Yes, it happens. Be warned. Check your accounts often.

What I've been doing all weekend

First, Friday night, I painted. I needed some way to de-stress from last week and it seems that destruction/construction on my house does a good job of that for me. So I taped and got 2 coats on the wall in about 4 hours and went to bed. When I woke up in the morning, the color was a lot bluer than I had expected but that's okay. Saturday, I had a class at Bead Obsessions where I ran into this pretty little girl


and found that I couldn't leave the shop without her. I'm going to make her little beady arms and today at work, Svitlana gave me a suggestion on how I could position her arms so it doesn't look like she's being crucified! After the class, I stopped at Costco to check out a tv to see what it looks like in person. I think you all saw that post :) Sunday, I went to the Fairfax Costco and picked up the wall mount since I figured that would save time for today and then had fun with a power drill. Mwhahahaha! Now I'm dangerous. Today, I talked two of my friends into helping me go get the tv. I figured 2 guys to move a tv would do the trick. They got into cuz well, it was a tv. And now, this is my basement:



No I don't have an HD signal coming in, but I'm still happy with it. See the painted wall behind it. The guys were impressed with how quick this was and how all they had to do was lift. So...who wants to sit in my basement this weekend and knit? The first MS3 clue comes out on Friday!

Guy moments

I've decided to start another category. This is the "I'm such a guy moment" category. I think this is because a good number of my good friends are guys and I have this tendency to run off for a weekend for sports related events and drinking. So today's moment...

I went to Costco to check out this 42" LCD tv because it's going on sale on Monday and I've read "love it" reviews and "I really hate that shitty thing" reviews. I had to go see for myself. I liked it. The images were sharper than the tvs around it and the settings weren't even turned all the way up. I was getting a little excited...you could even say, turned on. And then, somewhere in the loop that Costco has playing was a commercial for "NHL on NBC". THIS was the reason I started madly looking at HD. OH. MY. GOD! I was ready to cry tears of joy. I was turned on/excited by a piece of electronic equiptment of the audio/video variety.

Some fiber to look at

Way back at Stitches East 2006, I bought this ball of alpaca:



I had started spinning this up a while back, aiming for a 3 ply yarn that's somewhere around worsted weight. It was frustrating because I had to keep picking the vegetable matter out of the fiber and 3 bobbin fulls take a while to spin up, even though I was pretty much doing the long draw. But over the weekend, I sat down and finished the 3rd bobbin and immediately started plying. I like plying because you're just SO CLOSE to the finished product. I plied and set and it's been hanging out to dry. Now, this first skein is dry and ready to use. It's inspiring me to finish the rest of the ball, which doesn't look like it has gotten any smaller.

Just throwing stuff out there

My brain hurts and I have some pictures.

Progress of the Maple Leaf Shawl. I'm into the 2nd leaf pattern repeat here.

The orchid I was working on for the last couple of weeks. I'm taking a breather and then will be starting on the shop piece for Bead Obsessions. Class is on August 25th.

Me and my Tims. I've known these two guys since high school and are still two of my best friends. One of them is moving to Arizona next week so this was the reason for my trip up to NYC.

Laceweight! Laceweight!

I just ordered a 1 lb. cone of Jaggerspun Zephyr in black. I only need 4 onces but I figured that:

1. I shouldn't have to join ends
2. I could always use black
   

So there. It's done. Anyways, I love how Zephyr knits up.

Look!

Chicago Pics

I've put the pictures from the Chicago trip here. You'll all get the see the psuedo-fam whom I spend holidays with. I grew up with Lynn and Tina. I met Lynn when she was 2 and I met Tina when she was a week old. And now Lynn has graduated from college. Aww...

I also finished the first of the grasshopper socks during graduation. Hey, if I had to sit somewhere to wait a couple of hours for a ceremony to start and then sit through a ceremony where they read off 1000 names, you bet I'd have knitting! The last picture in the set was a picture of the sunburn I came back with.

I'm not dead, just tired

Right, so, I went to Chicago this weekend for a college graduation. I got some really good sushi and also incredibly sunburned. Why didn't I use sunscreen? I've never been sunburned before and so never thought about it. SPF 15 tends to help me tan lightly and SPF 30 turns me white. I've been working on an orchid for Beth, not so much time for other beading though you'd better believe I've got ideas in my head, cleaning my house and doing some light re-org, and going nuts at work, so...the usual! I still haven't found much motivation for knitting though the Elann Esprit is helping to inspire me with a couple of ideas. I also just got my invite to ravelry.com so I'm loading some of my projects and stuff in there. It comes in at a good time when I'm trying to gather all of my yarn and it will allow me to inventory. Pictures to come at some point. I'm still too tired and lazy :)