Just time for a quickie post before I head out shopping with Diana, who just got a new job and needs stuff to wear to it. Happy Birthday to Carolyn! A perfect day for a birthday - sunny and happy outside.

Wish my sweetie was in as good a mood as the weather seems to be. He was not cheerful when he left to head over to the computer lab. Tried my best to cheer him up, but it didn't work. I'm sure it'll wear off later. Among other things, he's going to digitize the "CBS Early Show" video from the other day, so I should have a link to that soon.

In the meantime, have a nice day, everyone!

Kat'nea, this pic's for you!



It's a throw, not a bedspread, but this was the best way to photograph it. A gift from the sweetie a few years ago. :-)

Very un-busy at the moment. And I think I have found what I want to make as a baby gift for my cousin Jill, courtesy of Erica's blog: MOO! Although she's making it in blue and white to look like clouds (an idea I love!) I will make it in the regular cow colors. Jill and I independently ended up liking cow print stuff in our kitchens, and I think this will be an absolutely adorable gift. Not to mention something completely different from all the pastel stuff she's bound to receive.

I'm ordering the book and yarn from Apple Laine, which I think I saw mentioned on Shetha's blog a while back. I like the idea of ordering from a real farm. I'm also asking for some samples of the beautiful yarns they show on their site. Sometimes mohair is itchy, so I want to feel theirs before I buy it.

Finished the last two squares for the small baby block last night - a duckie and a housie. So cute! Didn't get to take a pic, but I will later. Now I guess I will move on to the large block, and save the medium one for last, since it will feel small after the big one. This is definitely a good project to teach myself intarsia knitting. I'm a little concerned about assembling the blocks. Just afraid they won't all match up, even though I'll block them to the right size, and all. Gotta head down to the foam store soon to get the blocks to stuff them with.

So glad it's Friday, and a sunny one, to boot! Last night I cleaned up the sofa and other stuff, so I feel a b it better about the state of affairs at home. Next task will be to get some stuff listed on eBay. Mom has a bit of a Home Shopping/QVC thing, and she ends up buying more stuff than she can use. Either that or she buys a big kit of makeup and doesn't like all the stuff in it. Either way, about a year ago, she discovered she could give it to me to sell on eBay. I've been deluged ever since. Right now there is quite a pile of stuff next to the computer that I need to photograph and list so I can get it the hell out of my house! I shouldn't complain - all my spending money for last year's vacation came from selling that stuff, so it's definitely worthwhile. Just now that I have a full-time job again, the motivation is a little lower and I am busier.

Yay! I'm finished with the alcohol studies! Reading and summarizing nine of those things in two days was just not so fun. But at least now I have a really good understanding of them. Ack. And now, the project that I wasn't enjoying working on before this came up has been put on hold, so I have nothing hanging over my head. Yay!

So Marney started a blog, too - go Marney! I thought I had knitted a lot in the past 6 months, for a beginner, but that girl puts me to SHAME! And she looked cute talking about it on CBS this morning, too. Update on that - the boy says he may be able to digitize the video tomorrow.

Still yukky weather. Do I really have to go to the gym? I haven't gained any weight since I slowed down on it. And I am awfully tired. And there is an awfully large pile of summer clothes on my sofa, there since Sunday when I got tired of switching my closets over and disgusted at the sudden cold turn of weather. And I have knitting to do. I'm all into the blocks again, which is good, since the baby they are meant for will be born soon. :-) Given all that, I think I may just go straight home. Sssh, don't tell anyone.

So, I'm not famous yet, but I did catch several glimpses of myself, Carolyn, and Jackie a little while ago on the CBS "This Morning" knitting segment. I was particularly amused by the close-up of my hands knitting the sleeve of my cardigan - boy do I wish I had freshened up that bright pink manicure! The piece was amusing, and maybe it'll recruit some new knitters. I'm going to see if Ryan can digitize the VHS so I can post it somewhere, if no one gets to it before I do.

In other news, I hope the reservoirs are getting some of this rain that we're getting here in the city. Boy is it pouring out there. Luckily (well, no luck about it - shall I say smartily?) I wore my rubber rain shoes, nylon "track" pants (Old Navy), looooong London Fog raincoat and carried an umbrella. So basically the only part of me that really got wet were a few inches of my ankles, and they dry quickly because of the nylon.

I remember that back in high school it was decidedly uncool to use any sort of raingear. Particularly a raincoat or umbrella. So we'd end up like drowned rats at school, even though I only had about a four-minute walk. Looking back on it, I realized an interesting hierarchy of issues here: hair (BIG HAIR) was very important at the time, but apparently was less important than being "cool" in the rain, since the lack of raingear meant the flattening of hair. Interesting, and all exceedingly stupid. I wonder if high school kids are smarter today?

Back to the knitting news. I started off the night thinking I wouldn't do anything, but then got back into the baby blocks and did two more squares on the small block. The sailboat and the flower are the new ones, and have not been blocked or had their ends woven in yet, but I took a quick photo of the four I have completed so far. There's also a sailboat for the large block, but I didn't include that in the picture. Two more to go on the small one, six on the medium, and five on the large. Hmm. Perhaps I should've started on the large one, so it would get easier as time goes on.

I was afraid I would see what I saw when I made the blog rounds today. Kate is busy gloating about the Maple Leafs' victory over my dear Islanders. Oh well, I decided I would still like her - she can't help being Canadian any more than I can help being born on Long Island. Almost as irritating as the loss was that for some dumb reason the game was blacked out on my cable system, so when I returned from Stitch-n-Bitch I had to listen to my team lose via webcast. Ick.

Lots of fun last night at the Stitch-n-Bitch. Much smaller crowd this week, since the bright lights and TV cameras were not on the agenda. Got to see Carolyn working on a fuzzy pink donut (OK, someone said it was a swatch for a sweater, but we call 'em as we see 'em), and Jackie knitting away at her pretty Kidsilk Haze sweater. Plus I got to meet Deb, who doesn't have a blog at the moment, but I'm sure we'll convince her soon enough. Deb had my favorite story of the week when she told me a few days back that her 3-year-old daughter wanted to meet me because she saw the picture on my blog and thought I was a little girl, too!

I left the cafe and had the good fortune to catch the bus just as it was pulling into the stop across the street. Normally I would walk, but this particular bus happens to go up Avenue A, turn left on 14th Street, and drop my about 100 yards from my apartment. Who could resist? And when I sat down, I had a nice surprise in the form of Diane, the woman who taught my first knitting class! This is not so bizarre, since she teaches at Downtown Yarns, the LYS right near the cafe we Stitch-n-Bitch in. Still, it's always nice to run into friendly faces, particularly on the bus at night.

As for my knitting, I'm just plugging away at the sleeve of Mom's sweater. It feels big. I am having lilac cardigan sleeve flashbacks. Are all Rowan sleeves written big? Do women in the UK have particularly large arms? It's not as though the rest of the pattern is large. On the contrary, they seem to run a bit small, except for the sleeves. I am torn between frogging and sizing it down, and continuing on but checking it out before I make the second one. Am I stupid for giving myself the opportunity to make this mistake twice?! Only time will tell. I've decided this is a birthday sweater, so I am off the hook for finishing it by next Sunday.

And there you have it, today's minutae. Now I have eight clinical studies to read and summarize by the end of the day, and boy am I looking forward to it. We've moved from alcoholic rat studies to alcoholic people studies, so it's slightly more interesting.

Made it back to the gym last night, after about 2 weeks AWOL. Felt really good to get moving again! Being sick a few weeks back took so much out of me and it just took a long time to feel good again. Now I'm back to (what passes for) normal.

Finished the back of Mom's sweater last night and started on the sleeve, which I will work on at tonight's Stitch-n-Bitch. Funny, I was doing a sleeve there last week, too. People will think I only make sleeves! I was contemplating trying to do both sleeves at once, as suggested on the knitblogs list, but I didn't want to carry all that yarn and all that (eventual) sleeve with me everywhere, so I am doing them one at a time. I am debating whether to try and finish this for Mother's Day, or save it for her birthday, June 11. I suppose time will decide for me. I'm sort of leaning towards the birthday, just because if I give it now for Mother's Day, anything I give for the birthday will be anticlimactic, don't you think?

I also have to get those baby blocks done soon, as Tracy will be giving birth in the next few weeks, though I won't see her right away. Those are more of a sit at home project, since the intarsia requires chart-reading and concentration, as well as several different colors of yarn, making it (once again) too much trouble to carry around.

I promised photos from the Cherry Blossom Festival last night, and I'm only 12 hours late.



Some of the pretty cherry blossoms - the photos hardly do them justice.

Little fishies in the lily pool (no lilies yet).

The happy couple in the bluebell wood. We're loving the new camera with the variable-angle LCD monitor that swings out so you can take pics of yourself!

The gratuitous kissie shot.

Phew, what a morning. At 5pm Friday some hell broke loose on a project here, and we had to clean up the mess and have a "let's be a team again" meeting. This project has been @$%ed for quite a while, though I only got involved a month or so ago, so I mostly listened. I was really impressed that my boss handled it so well - I am so happy to be working for him. I've worked for some awful people in the past (well, nice people, lousy managers) and this is so refreshing!

Kinda pressed for time, so I'll give you the quick summary - cherry blossoms were beautiful, pics to come later tonight. And I finished the lilac cardigan! Well, except for weaving in a few ends and sewing on a button. It looks pretty good, though I think it needs a wash to maybe soften it up a bit. I noticed my swatch of the Summer Tweed was softer and nicer post-washing, so I will probably do that before I take pics and stuff. So, try and be patient and go on with your lives while you anxiously await the photos.