Just show up

I was exhausted yesterday (and a teeny bit hungover - gee, I wonder why?).

I considered bailing on Knit Night (now that's tired!).

But, I thought I would just pop in to say hello, and if I still felt crappy, go home.

Well, wouldn't you know it, I had a wonderful time. We had a newbie, and I got to help her pick yarn for her first project, do the math for her swatch, and fake a legwarmer pattern.

I looked at my watch, thinking I'd been there all of fifteen minutes, and it was nearly time to pack up and go home!

The hardest part is getting somewhere. Once I show up, things fall into place and I usually am so glad. I need to remember that.

I am so proud

I got my first #1 hit on a crazy search term.

If you google "burning barrel Minneapolis" the first search return will be me.

While that is not as profane as I could have hoped for, it is bizarre enough to be pleasing, just the same.

In other news...

I barely got out of my pyjamas, all weekend. Which is a shame, considering the list of chores to do around here, but it was good for my knitting. My French market bag needs another handle, some knitchener, kitcener, I mean grafting (yes, I am tipsy), and then it will be ready for felting.

Oh, and I received a lovely, totally unexpected gift this evening. A dear, dear friend of mine was in Vancouver for a writers conference, and she knows Diana Gabaldon. I have a personally autographed copy of Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade. Such a treat, from a woman I respect, written by a woman I respect. It doesn't get better than that.

This does make up for my failure to go to Minneapolis.

J, thanks so much. You have a pretty good idea how much this means to me. Socks are coming your way, as soon as I find the appropriate yarn and pattern. This calls for something special!

No road trip, knitting instead.

I didn't go to Minneapolis. Earlier in the week, I was ill (to the point where I had to get off the bus before embarrassing myself royally. Also, if someone is throwing up in a parking lot across the street from a seedy bar, that does not necessarily mean that the sick person was a patron of said bar.)

Needless to say, I took a taxi the rest of the way home.

I am disappointed about it, but I know that my bank account will thank me later.

The other day, a colleague mentioned that there's only sixty-some-odd shopping days until Christmas. Well, I don't do much Christmas shopping, but I had better get cracking on some Christmas knitting.

My list is not extensive. Two little girl Christmas sweaters (different ones, this year, I've learned my lesson) and a pair of socks for the boy. Easily done in two months, but I want to finish a couple of things first.

So, naturally, I started two completely unrelated projects this week. I have the urge to do some felting, and N needs a new hat.

These are the projects:

French Market from Knitty. I've had this pattern printed and saved for over a year, and on Wednesday, when home sick, I dug some stash yarn out and cast on. It's a lovely, mindless knit. I'm using my new Knitpicks Harmony needles, which are turning out to be wonderful. The yarn is Lion Wool (colour: flower garden) and it is quite rough. There's no way I would wear it, so it's perfect for a felted bag. I've got four balls, and I'm going to use it all, so it's gone (I bought it while undergoing some retail therapy a year ago. I just needed to buy SOMETHING).

Tweed Beret from Interweave Knits (Winter 2006). Yarn is Paton's Decor in New Teal. This is the first acrylic blend I've used in years. I knit the same hat last spring, and even though the yarn has the same yardage as what I used, this is ridiculously pointy on top. Therefore, it will be frogged, promptly and begun again with bigger needles (4.5 mm instead of 4, likely). We'll see how that goes. I should have it done in the next week or so, so that N will have it when it gets cold.

Stepping outside to take these photos just now makes me wonder what I'm going to do all winter - my camera works best with natural light, and there's no way I'm going outside in the middle of January just to take picture of knitting.

Is it insane to drive eight hours to a book signing?

Crazy Aunt Purl, one of my heroes, is going to be in Minneapolis on Thursday.

I want to go.

Pros:

• How often does someone I admire get this close to Winnipeg? Not often.
• I haven't done anything fun and spontaneous in forever.
• The Canadian dollar is very strong right now.
• I loves a road trip, and have never been to Minneapolis.
• Gas is relatively cheap right now.
• Ikea is in Minneapolis.
• I want to go.

Cons:

• I would have to rent a car and get a hotel room. Money is, um, not as tight as it was, but is tight nonetheless.
• It's an eight hour drive, one-way.
• I shouldn't really ask for time off work. I've only been there two months.
• I have a huge deadline at work.
• Crossing the border is a huge PITA.
• I don't have a passport.
• Who would look after my cats?
• I have never met this person. She may think I am stalking her.

So, should I stay or should I go?

Why didn't I get a hands-free phone?

So, I'm doing a bunch of work for an organization I belong to that requires making phone calls. Lots and lots of phone calls (I'm selling tickets to a show).

I can't talk on the phone and knit! Progress on EVERYTHING has stalled, and it's driving me nuts. If I don't take an hour to knit tonight, I'm going to be very, very cranky, and no one will want to buy anything from me.

In other news, I made a $250,000 mistake at work. And not in a good way. Oops. That's why year-end adjusting journal entries should be posted at year-end, not four months later (and by a new person who wasn't with the company at year-end).

Just sayin'.

Thankfully, this is an entry that is removed before it goes to our parent company, and for tax purposes, I've got plenty of time to fix it. Still, I'm not looking forward to explaining this tomorrow (and, it will be fixed tomorrow).

I still feel like a moron.

But, here's a picture of one of the products we sell:

That's a honking big pile of sand. And, it's bigger now. Exciting, eh?

I use this machine (while climbing the pile) to take co-ordinates of where the aggregate (technical term) sits on Earth in relation to a bunch of satellites. I take those coordinates, calculate an average distance from sea-level and volume using a funky software program. Then I use plain ol' Excel to convert the volume into mass (how the stuff is delivered, invoiced and sold). Boom! Ending inventory.

This is how I look after doing this on a stinking hot day:

Bad hair and no make-up aside, I think I look pretty damn good. I worked hard (actually, it took me three days to recover). Also, note the Ziploc baggie of knitting sticking out of my purse. Not that I had time to knit, but I did have it with me, just in case. Those were the Monkey socks.

A knitting report, finally.

It's amazing how the hands can be trained to do something one way, and then when it's time to switch it up, the hands can't change.

I've spent most of the day knitting. I should have been doing a thousand other things, but I wanted to knit. I did a pattern repeat on my Storm Water Scarf (for me, it will be a shawl), and that's coming along nicely, despite my inability to count to eight (and I'm an accountant. I manage millions of dollars of assets every day. Be afraid, very, very afraid).

I started the Winding Cable Knee Socks. These will not be bar-and-bus socks, I promise you that. Just the cuff has been messing with my head, and I'm only 11 rows in. Don't get me started on the charts. When I get there, I will have to be sober, that's for sure. (A note about the pattern size - it's geared to be a woman's shoe size six or seven. That's about the size of my big toe. And the leg circumference - 11.5 inches, stretched. Mine is 14.5 inches, and I have skinny legs, for my size. Yikes. Needless to say, I'm not pleased about this, because I adore the socks. Can't add stitches without messing up the entire aesthetic, so I've gone up a needle size (2.75 mm from 2.5mm). I hope that will be enough. If not, someone smaller that me is getting a fan-fricking-tastic pair of pink socks. That said, I have two sisters-in-law with birthdays this month.

I've also done a bit on the bar-and-bus socks. I'm reading a new book, Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade, and perusing blogs (and this little website called Ravelry) and well, I need simple knitting while I read. Normally bar-and-bus socks don't even come out of my purse at home, unless I'm grafting a toe, picking up gusset stitches or casting on (you know, critical points).

My bar-and-bus socks are just a variation on the Harlot's basic sock recipe. Instead of plain stockingette , I'm k2, k1tbl, p1. It looks really sharp and isn't quite as boring as plain knitting. Perfect for reading, since I only look at it every few stitches.

However, when I started the Winding Cable socks, I could not, for the life of me, p2 k2 for the 16 repeats required. I would p1 and then knit - 'cuz that's what I've been doing for the past week. Argh! Hence the first sentence of this post.

Other knitting stuff: when I was home last weekend, I took the babies' measurements. Christmas is coming, after all. Last year, I made identical sweaters, and it was so damn cute I wanted to barf. But, finishing the second sweater was agony. As the Harlot says, second sweater syndrome is way worse than second sock syndrome. I've had a request for a particular type of sweater (requiring intarsia) for one. I'll probably be designing it myself, since I haven't seen anything approximating the requested idea anywhere. The other? I have no idea. I'm enamoured of this sweater, but everything I've read about the sizing says that it turns out huge. This is a very, very dainty little girl we're talking about. Huge would not be good. But I'm intrigued by the construction...

Gotta get back to that book. Who knew that a straight woman could write about a gay man so well?

The romance is gone

It's Friday night, and I've worked like a demon all week (and loved it, by the way, I'm starting to own this job). My sweetie and I have hardly seen each other. I was ill, he was ill, I was out of town, blah, blah, blah.

So, he's bringing take-out and we are going to watch DVR'd episodes of Farscape. On a Friday night. This is only marginally superior to the grocery-shopping Saturday night of a few weeks ago.

Yup, the romance is gone. How long do you think it is until I stop tidying up before he comes over?