There is definitely something wrong with waking up earlier on the weekend than I do during the week. But there I was at 6:30, wide awake. Well, too awake to go back to sleep, but too tired to feel great about it. What is up?! I have very little trouble falling asleep, I just can't stay asleep!

Anyway, at least I used my time pretty wisely. Got to the greenmarket early, since one of the things I wanted to do today was make some preserves. I got strawberries and rhubarb - guess what kind of jam I made? Just finished that up and it's cooling on the counter. Yes, it is possible to make jam in a 4' x 4' kitchen. It's not pretty, but it's possible.

What is pretty are the flowers I bought. Couldn't resist the "last of the season!" sign next to the peonies, so I got a bunch of those and also a bunch of yarrow. I think they look purdy together, what do you think?



I also stopped at my always-favorite, Ronnybrook Farms, and picked up a good combination - a quart of nonfat maple-vanilla yogurt and a pint of butter pecan ice cream. That's twice as much nonfat yogurt as ice cream, so I'll probably lose weight, right?

The bad news is I called The Yarn Company and they don't have any more orange Topas. They put aside a few balls of green, though, and now I have to go up there a little later. I guess something's getting partially frogged, and probably the top will be wider stripes of green than orange. Argh. I am having the sneaking suspicion that this tank is going to be a bit bigger than I want it to be, too, which may be why I am so short of yarn. Grr. What to do, what to do. Probably what to do would have been to be more careful and think more before I started. Oh well, it wouldn't be such a pain if the store wasn't in one of the least convenient places in the city to get to from my apartment.

Speaking of my apartment, before I can go up to the yarn store I have to finish cleaning up the kitchen and stuff. Hasta la vista!

Ack. I am nearly done with the back of the melon tank and I am realizing I have less yarn than I thought I did. And of course since it was on sale, the Yarn Company's website shows them being sold out of the orange (I could call tomorrow to doublecheck, but I'm not very hopeful.) I'm not quite sure I've got enough to finish both sides - it's going to be close. Maybe I should do the back in a deep "V" like the Ginger tank? Would that result in using less yarn? Seems like it ought to. Let me know what you think. On the up side, I figured out the stripe issue pretty well and it should be AOK when I get to the top of this side. Also on the up side, I don't need extra yarn for the armhole edgings, as I've been doing them using the same slip stitch method that my Rowan sweaters have used - I like the way it looks.

Salena and I had great fun at lunch. We stopped into Conway (kind of a low-rent K-mart) for some cheap flip-flops, and I found the most adorable slides! Faux wood sole (squishy foam, actually) with a translucent band across the instep with a little bunch of plastic fruit on it! For seven bucks, I have funky Carmen Miranda shoes! I also grabbed a cute peasant-style top in white gauze with blue embroidery and 3/4 sleeves. I've been wanting something like that but couldn't deal with buying such a flimsy and trendy item at a high price. For 9 bucks, of course, I was perfectly willing.

I love going into cheesy stores (messy racks, bins of stuff to dig through) and finding cute stuff! The peasant top is probably made in the same Indian factory as all the other ones I've seen for 40 bucks and way up. And I'll probably end up wearing it with $150 pants I got on sale at Barney's for 30 bucks. Yes, I am little-miss-bargain-finder and proud of it!

Happy Summer Solstice, everyone! Go outside at noon today and check out how short your shadow is. Or just kick back somewhere with a cool iced tea and enjoy the glory of my favorite season.

I, on the other hand, will be here at work. All by my lonesome. My boss, and the other two writers in my group all have the day off, so I'm running the show. Fortunately, there is very little to run. I do need to work up a draft of a little brochure on healthy eating to review on Monday, but it's not a big deal. And there may be something I have to read and sign-off on later, but all in all it should be a quiet day. My friend Salena and I agreed that since we're about the only two here from our project teams, we're going to have a nice relaxing lunch somewhere.

I have the promised photo of the melon tank in progress. Despite what I said yesterday, I seem to just be plugging away with 2" stripes. If it bites me in the butt at the end, I'll be a sad frogger, but I'm hoping it won't happen.



I wonder if I'll manage to finish this up before we leave next Friday? I guess it depends what else I am doing in the meantime. I read somewhere (can't recall if it was the Knitlist or the Knitblogs list) that Continental is still not allowing knitting paraphernalia on their flights, so I suppose I will not try and push the envelope. It's an overnight flight anyway, so hopefully I will catch a little shuteye. If not, I do know how to read, and I have many NY Times Magazine crossword puzzles that could keep me occupied for quite a while. Still, it'd be so nice to while away the flight time in a relaxed, knitty manner. Damn the people who have brought so many changes, large and small, to our formerly peaceful existence.

I'm not just talking about knitting on planes here. It used to be that when I went away, my biggest worry was that my cat would be lonely. Even with people coming in to visit daily, she likes to sleep with me and I'd always feel awful leaving her like that. But now, the worry is bigger and has actually led me to change my usual procedure. Instead of leaving her home and having people come in, my parents are going to come pick her up and take her to their house for the two weeks.

This change of plans is partly because it is a longer trip than usual, and partly because of all the fear of another terror attack coming over the Independence Day weekend. I realized that (a) if anything happened to her directly or (b) anything indirectly kept other people from coming to look in on her, I would feel so awful, guilty, and terribly sad. So, the lesser of two evils is shipping her off to "grandma" for a bit. I'm sure she will terrorize Mom's cat, Kiwi, to some extent. Mom, I apologize in advance!

I forgot to take a picture of my melon tank in progress. I'm about 5" into it, and trying to decide what to do with the stripes. The first two are just about 2" wide, and I was going to do that all the way up, but then it occurred to me that if I get to the last stripe and don't have the space to do 2", it is going to look really weird. So now I'm thinking maybe my stripes will get progressively narrower towards the top. Or maybe I'll start going sort of "random" - except that I would have to keep careful track, since I want the back to match the front exactly. What do you think?

On my way back from getting the sunglasses (love them!) I discovered there is a greenmarket about 10 blocks from my office and Ronnybrook Farm, some of my favorite people in the world, have a table there on Wednesdays! They're thinking about Fridays, too. Could I be happier? No, not really, because I am eating their tapioca pudding for the first time and I think I may start making sounds one just shouldn't make eating lunch at her desk. Yummmmmm!

I can't believe I almost forgot to mention this. Last night at Cafe Des Moines, they were playing Dolly Parton. Over and over and over. I'm talking at least two hours worth. And as we were leaving, they played "Islands in the Stream" (her duet with Kenny Rogers) four times in a row. Marney, Debbie and I all walked out of there singing it. I don't know if it was the 5:45 wake-up, the Dolly music, or if they were even funnier than usual, but somehow I found everything those two chicas said last night utterly hilarious. Particularly Debbie telling us she had "salmon teri-yukky" for lunch that day. I almost can't wait to have some bad Japanese food so I can use that line at the table! Thanks, ladies, for giving me so many good giggles last night!

Another sleepy morning. Not much new there. For some reason I just am not sleeping well lately, and I keep waking up way too early. Today wasn't as bad as yesterday's 5:45 a.m. wakeup, but I still wouldn't mind actually sleeping until my alarm goes off. It's not as though I am waking up because my body's done sleeping - I just wake up and am still tired. Grr.

I seem to have conquered the wandering gauge problem with the Topas yarn. At Stitch-n-Bitch last night I managed to get it to 5 stitches per inch on a #6 needle, and the swatch looked nice enough to start on Bonne Marie's Boat Neck Shell. I'm doing it in stripes of the green and canteloupe, approximately 2" in width. I'm keeping careful track of how many rows I do in each color, so that I can reproduce it exactly and match up the stripes when I finish. Let's hope it works. I'm just a few rows into the second stripe, and the colors look so pretty together! I'll take a picture tonight.

Going to pick up my new sunglasses at lunchtime today. Yoon totally hooked me up, vision-wise. When I saw her 2 weeks ago, I got a year's supply of (2-week disposable) contacts at cost (100 bucks), plus there's a $30 rebate on them. And I got really great prescription sunglasses - cool purple-y Calvin Klein plastic frames (with big sidepieces to block out the sun from my delicate little eyes) with polarized lenses and anti-scratch coating for 95 bucks. The frames alone list for around $200, without the prescription lenses, so this is obviously a fantastic deal! I love having prescription sunglasses, and haven't had a pair in years. They are so much better than the little sunglass clips that go on regular glasses.

I also want a new pair of non-prescription sunglasses, since the ones I have are like 5 years old and scratched. Now that I am wearing my contacts at least as often as my glasses, it's kind of important. I wanted these Persol glasses (#2607) I saw at Sunglass Hut, but they were $140 bucks there. I found them online (obviously) for much less - $90, but when I ordered, the guy called and said they would have to ship them from Italy and it would take 5 weeks. At the time, my trip was 6 weeks away, so I told him I'd be in Italy soon, and he told me I could get them even cheaper there. So, hopefully some nice shades will be one souvenir of this trip.

Well, it's certainly not sparkling clean in here, but I did make good headway last night. That included a ton of handwashing that I had been putting off for a while. Smells a bit like wet dog in my bathroom now, from the mix of silk, cashmere and merino knits. Mmmm, wet dog.

What am I doing up this early? This is nothing! It was 5:45 a.m. when my brain decided to wake up. Once the brain's up, the body reluctantly follows, so there I was. I tried to get back to sleep for about 20 minutes, but that wasn't happening, so I hauled my butt out of bed and have been mostly surfing since then. Trying to sort out what sort of gift knitting I am going to be doing over the next several months. Although I am awake, I am pretty fuzzy-headed, so I really can't say I've gotten all that much done.

Ordered some yummy Indian food for dinner last night and I can't wait to have the leftovers tonight! I am hoping to make this one of those rare nights when I have dinner BEFORE I go to Stitch-n-Bitch. If I don't eat beforehand, I end up starving at 10 p.m. with nothing to eat and no motivation to either make something or even order anything delivered. I'm excited to go to S-n-B tonight, since I have missed the past two weeks. After waking up so early, I suspect I will not stay too late tonight. I also have my friend Diana coming over tonight. She has some sort of after-work plans in the city tonight and asked if she could stay here instead of going back to Long Island tonight. I really don't like having people stay over during the week (excluding my sweetie, of course!) but I said yes. She's going to be taking care of my little kitty during a good portion of my vacation, so I figured I'd be nice.

After I got tired of cleaning I got about 5 more rows done on the Moo baby blanket.



I am wondering whether there's something funky in the directions here. It calls for straight stockinette stitch the whole way through, with no edging or anything to stop it from rolling. And boy is it rolling. I gave it a quick press with the iron for the picture below, but is blocking really going to get this to stay (relatively) flat? It's Mission Falls 1824 Cotton, and other than the rolling, I am absolutely loving the yarn - so soft and yummy! But am I going to end up having to add a crocheted edge at the end to keep it from rolling? I don't know if I'd even have enough yarn for that. I thought I had ordered an extra ball of each color, but somehow I didn't.

Tonight I must clean up my apartment. The past three weeks have been so busy and I have been home so little, that the place has gotten scary. I know I just need a couple of hours to put everything right. It's not that anything is dirty - I have been cleaning the kitchen and bathroom regularly - it's all the clutter. Clothes that didn't make it back to either laundry basket or hanger. Mail and newspapers I can't discard yet but haven't had time to read. Yarn. The down comforter that is off the bed and packed into a vacuum-sealed bag, but sitting against the wall looking for a place to spend the summer. You can imagine, I'm sure.

So, I am going to ignore the siren song of the yarn tonight and get my place in order. I get so grumpy when it's messy, so this will improve life in general for me and those around me. Hehe. Then tomorrow I can wake up relaxed and happy, and go to Stitch-n-Bitch with a clear conscience. Yay!

I can't believe there are only 11 days left until we leave for Europe. Yikes!! I'll have to post a general itinerary sometime in the next few days.

I survived the weekend of many plans! Hallelujah! It has been pretty hectic. First was Leslie's birthday party in Connecticut on Saturday, which featured a mini carnival with human bowling, jousting (Ryan almost won the grand prize!) and various other party games. There are lots of pics to be downloaded soon.

Saturday night we went to a fun party at Mark's. Mark and Ryan went to Cornell together, and now Mark works at Blue Sky, which is someplace Ryan might want to work at once he finishes his Masters. The party was mostly on the roof of Mark's building, and pretty fun. Got to meet some of the guys who worked on Ice Age and hear some interesting stories about all that. They seem like a pretty cool bunch of computer geeks. ;-)

Today we went back out to my parents' and took Dad out to lunch and then to the Aquarium out in Riverhead. We got stuck in traffic from an accident along the way, so we didn't have all that much time to spend there, which was sort of a bummer. But the place wasn't all that huge, so we did get to see probably 80 percent of it, just not in a lot of depth. Then again, there wasn't a lot of depth - it was irritating to me that most of the tanks didn't include descriptions of what was inside. Lots of neat Atlantis-themed stuff, though. Worth the trip, though not so much the sitting in traffic part of the trip!

Jackie joined us for the last event of the weekend at the Remote Lounge, which was showing the video work that Ryan and his classmates did this year. His video, "The Grudge" was very well-received! Laughter in all the right places. Yay Ryan! After watching that and a few others, we got more interested in playing with the webcams and video screens and spying on people in other parts of the bar. Apparently, others were spying on us, too. See if you can find us! (Hint - we're mostly on Channel 6). For a while, we (or at least certain parts of us) were quite popular, it appears! [Note added later - you can see a selection of pics on Jackie's blog, too.]

Knitting? Oh yeah, I did a few rows on the Rowan purse on the train. Not much else. Way too busy for that this weekend!

How lucky am I that both my primary care physician and my gynecologist are both located near yarn stores? After my physical this morning (everything looks fine, thank you for asking) I was able to walk just 2 blocks to The Woolgathering on E. 84th Street and picked up the yarn bobbins I need. I looked at all the pretty yarns they had (nothing I hadn't seen before really) and petted some nice baby alpaca, but I didn't buy any fiber. I have plenty at home waiting for projects, and I am sure I will end up finding some in France and/or Italy. (Ryan already said he won't try and stop me!)

I did actually pick up the Spring/Summer issue of Family Circle Easy Knits because I fell in love with the whale baby blanket on page 57. Can't find a photo online, but I'll try to remember to scan it later when I am at home. There are also a few cute tops in there that look like quick and easy knits (well, duh, "easy" is in the title!)

Ryan just IMed me with great news - we are going to go on a balloon flight when we're in France! I am very excited, as I have always wanted to do that! His Dad asked him to check into it and make reservations. Cool!

Last night I got tired of futzing with the Topas yarn, so instead I decided to start the Moo blanket. Even though Jill's baby won't be born until October, I figured this blanket could take a while and why not be prepared? I got maybe 12 rows into it (113 stitches across) before I got to the point of needing more yarn bobbins. I thought I had more than I did. There are only two colors, but because of the cow spots, the color changes a bunch of times in each row. So far I am being very diligent about weaving in my ends as I go along, because I know this will be a giant monkey on my back at the end if I don't! It's hard to see much in this photo, because it's curling so much at the moment, but here's the progress so far - you can see the photo from the pattern book, too:



The Mission Falls 1824 Cotton I'm using for this (it's their pattern, too) is really nice to work with. It's so soft! And at 4 stitches per inch, it knits up relatively quickly for baby stuff. I can't wait to get further on this blankie - it's just going to be so cute!

I also started working on the little purse kit that came with my Rowan International membership. I wish I had gotten the colors in the photo, but instead I have brown and peach. Not the combination I'd have picked, but they look OK together, and I wanted to have something to work on in the waiting room at the doctor's office this morning! I'm just going for a physical - no big deal. After working on this cholesterol-lowering drug for a few months, I really feel like I need to get my cholesterol checked! It's always been good, but now I'm all paranoid. :-)

This Topas yarn is starting to really irk me. I love the way it feels and looks, but I can't get a consistent gauge with it. I was getting 5 stitches per inch, so I figured I could do Bonne Marie's boat neck shell. I scaled the pattern back a bit to make the size work, and I cast on, starting with a garter stitch edge. Humongous! OK, frog those few rows, swatch again. Now it's just about 4 stitches per inch with garter stitch, 4.5 with stockinette. That's on #6 needles. I don't have any 5s, so I'm at a bit of a standstill. The fabric looks OK at this gauge, but now I have to re-think the pattern. Either use something different, or whip out the calculator and do some more math. I think I got spoiled working on that Summer Tweed stuff, since I was actually using patterns made for that yarn - a first! I actually like this halter pattern that the Yarn Company has on their site, but I'm at a loss as to how to obtain the thing and I kind of don't feel like buying it when it would be easy enough to figure it out on my own. I'm just being lazy and cranky, maybe because it's hot.

Busy day here, not much time to blog. And I can't make it to Stitch-n-Bitch tonight because my Mom and Dad came into town for the day (her real birthday is today) and want to go to dinner. At the Seaport. I'm sure it will be fun, it's just that right now I am feeling swamped.

If you want a chuckle, check out South Park Betsy & Ryan. :-)

U.S. Arrests American Accused of Planning 'Dirty Bomb' Attack. This really did nothing to improve my mood today.

How irritating - I decided to post directly into blogger (usually I write my posts in a word doc and cut & paste it) and of course it loses the post. Grr.

Well, what I said was that Mom loved her sweater, and it looked really nice on her, as you can see for yourself.



I'm not very chatty today. Work is looking like it's going to get busy, which is a good thing, since I have had many dull days lately. And in general I just have a lot spinning through my head and haven't had a lot of time to focus on it lately. Been doing lots of fun stuff, but right now I feel like I need to do something a little deeper. I might spend some time writing (not blog writing) tonight. I've been itching to get some things down on "paper," and some quiet hours tonight would be a good start.

Of course there's always my apartment to clean, or knitting to do. But at some point, I need to put that stuff aside if I am going to get anything else done. Lately I feel like I've become a bit one-dimensional, and I'm not liking it so much. Time for a little bit of change - nothing drastic, just need to bring some neglected pursuits back to the priority list.

I had interesting (to me, at least) bus experiences both yesterday afternoon and this morning. Yesterday's was actually very irritating, but funny in retrospect. I was on a packed uptown bus, headed to the eye doctor. My rather stuffed tote bag was on my shoulder, and I was leaning against the side of the bus, when this very large-breasted (this matters, I tell you) heavy woman starts shoving her way past me. She was squishing me, and I was really grossed out by having some lady's boobs smashed up on me like that, so I tried to get her to stop so I could move my bag and make more room.

"Wait, wait a sec," I said, and her reply, in a serious Brooklyn accent and dripping with nastiness was "Oh yeah, I'm gonna wait fuh you?" as she plowed past me. I turned to her and said "I asked you to wait because I was going to move my bag and make it easier for you to get through" to which she replied "oh yeah, shoa you wuh" as if I had intentionally made this whole thing difficult for her, when really what made it difficult was partly her size and mostly her rudeness. Somehow this experience irked me enough to glare at her occasionally for the next ten blocks, and then turn to her and cheerily call out "Bye, nasty!" in a sing-song voice as I got off the bus at 56th Street. Then it occured to me that she might actually chase me, and I was a little nervous until the bus pulled away. :-)

I'm not usually obnoxious, but she just really got to me!

This morning was not confrontational, just odd. Around 29th Street, a fireman got on the bus. A fireman in full fire gear, with the helmet, coat and boots, carrying his shoes. Not your normal rush-hour sight! He didn't look or smell like he'd been at a fire, so I wonder if perhaps he was doing the "walk of shame"? But who hooks up at a fire?! An amusing bit of speculation for a Friday morning.

The office is quiet today. We have "Summer Fridays" which means everyone gets to pick 6 Fridays and have those days off. I haven't had one yet (next week is my first) but today seems to be a very popular Friday, as almost everyone I work with is gone. Oh darn. ;-)

If you've made it this far, here's your reward: A Finished Object! All that's left on Mom's sweater is to sew in my little "Betsy made this just for me!" custom label in the back. Click on the photo for a larger version that shows the sparkly bits much more clearly.



And one last note - I've convinced Ryan to start a blog! For those of you who don't know, Ryan is hard at work on his Masters degree in 3D Animation, and this summer he's starting his thesis project (he graduates next Spring.) The project is a short animated film, and if you're so inclined, you can read the ryanimator blog and learn all about it. I expect there will be very little knitting content on his blog. Unless I knit something for the blogger. :-)

Re-knit that bit on the second sleeve and set it in last night. Now I just have to sew the sleeve and side seams, and Mom's sweater will be done in time for her birthday. Yay me! I just hope she likes it.

Still thinking about the melon tank I want to make and how I want to make it. I have been very scattered lately, with so many plans, that I haven't really devoted a lot of thought to any particular project. I'm sort of feeling like my life is getting away from me just a bit. And there's no end in sight to the busy-ness. This weekend we're out to Long Island for Mom's birthday. Next weekend we have a friend's 30th birthday party in Connecticut on Saturday, and Father's Day back on Long Island on Sunday. Then there's one weekend left before we go to Europe. Eek!

Tonight I am going to the eye doctor. I'm looking forward to it, because she (Yoon) is a friend - not a close friend that I hang out with on my own, but a close friend of my good friend Wendy, and Yoon and I always get along well when we see each other. It'll be nice to have a real eye doctor I can trust, as opposed to hoping the guy at the eyeglasss store actually knows what he is doing. The progression of my myopia (nearsightedness) seems to have slowed considerably in the past 5-8 years, which is a plus. But I am still pretty much useless for anything but sleep or quiet meditatin without glasses or contact lenses. I have friends who are very happy after laser surgery, but I am stll chicken.

Hoping to make it to the Calvin Klein sample sale after my appointment. It's right near Yoon's office, so if I can get out of there quickly enough (my appointment is at 5:30) I may be able to do it. There's also (pay attention, Deb!) a J. Crew sample sale (listed on that same page) that I would love to hit. Damn, I was right across the street from there yesterday but didn't know about it. How vexing!

After running like a madwoman (mostly for fun stuff, but fun is still exhausting) for over a week, something had to give last night, so I didn't go to Stitch-n-Bitch. I felt bad and knew I'd miss everyone, but when I walked in the door after work, the cat box was stinky, the dishes were piling up, there was nothing decent to eat, and I just felt totally fried. So I went to the supermarket and the pet store, and took care of some household business. It's still not nearly clean and pristine, but kitty and I are certainly much happier.

Later in the evening I had to perform a bit of corrective surgery on Mom's sweater. You may recall the first time I knit the sleeve, it was huge, so I frogged, decreased the number of stitches, and re-knit it. Much better, but then the sleeve was a bit too short to fit nicely into the armhole. Duh. So I frogged a few inches and increased a bit more frequently at the top until I had the amount of stitches specified in the pattern, and set in the first sleeve. Worked like a charm, and really didn't take too long. I will do the same on the other sleeve tonight, and should be AOK for finishing this by Saturday, when I see Mom for her birthday. It's a tiny bit of a pain to frog the cast-off sleeve, but it's a good lesson learned and I had plenty of time to fix it. Yay!

Now that I did that, I am feeling adventurous and trying to decide what to do with the pretty Topas yarn. I know it will be a tank using both colors, but I am not sure what I want it to look like. It'll be some sort of stripes, but I am debating whether I want them to be even stripes, irregular "random" stripes, zig-zaggy stripes, or maybe stockinette in one color and some sort of lace pattern in the other. Or something completely different. I will be looking around for inspiration over the next few days, I expect.