Thank Youuuuu!

To my new friend Cheriwan (real name Jillian - rechristened "Jennifer" don't ask) who vvv generously sent me the following in the recent Ravelry swap:

Don'tcha love opening mystery boxes with wee individually wrapped presents inside?? Some lovely yarn (have always loved working with Crystal Palace yarns!) in pink (looks more red in pic), v. handy looking stitch markers, skull yarn notions bag (love.it.) funky bubblegum girlie card and bookmark - candy! And 2 patterns!! Yay She even went to the trouble of ordering me things from etsy - have included the links.

Thanks again Jillian!

A very Good Friday

Good Friday was a big deal when I was a child in Ireland. I went to Catholic school all the way through (otherwise known as "school" - secular schools very much the exception). By the time I was coming through the ranks the numbers of nuns was dwindling but there were enough of them around to have a pretty heavy influence on the favour of our education. "Holy Week" - of which Good Friday is pretty much the climax - was a very prayer/mass-heavy occasion. Also it's about the 38th day of Lent, so by now every cell in your body would be crying out for chocolate/biscuits/crisps/sugar in your tea. Most significant of all (as I got older anyway) this is the one day of the year that all bars close in Ireland. We'd always host/attend a big house party instead (not to be denied the ~25% of our nutrition that came from alcohol back then), but still.

But not here. It's a regular work day, something that I always find odd, even after 9 years in the US.

The Internets is acting up something terrible. I keep having to reconnect to the wireless connection, and about half the time I get the message to "contact the person who manages your network". You mean, me? Grr. Add to that my work e-mail connection is down and so today, working from home, I have to catch up on reading...not talking about the latest Marian Keyes here, you understand, but 30-page somnolents on industrial sanitizers and the like...

To answer Knitty McKnitknit - I can't knit at work, not exactly, but I can knit on the metro to and from, and while on conference calls if I'm doing something straightforward. I am very lucky.

I've been having fun the last couple of days putting together 2 swap packages and 2 birthday presents. The HSS3 sock swap is about ready to go out, once the blocked socks dry. I made 4 stitch markers last night, (and while I had the beads out I made myself an Eastertime necklace.)The sock swap also required a Harry Potter-related knitted pattern to be sent. Hmm. Couldn't decide what to do here as there are so many free patterns out there that my swapee could download herself. Then at the end of February this little guy popped up on the pattern-a-day calendar: So I decided to make a Hedwig kit, and sent my copy of this pattern, with a cover sheet about Hedwig and all the yarn needed.

How good is your Friday?

Sheila & Staceys' yarn party

Saturday dawned windy and bright - the perfect day to think about knitting socks had anyone asked me. After a false start the night of the ice-storm, Stacey rescheduled Sheila Rovelstad’s Hand-Dyed Sock Yarn party for 1PM Saturday.

Here's Sheila, with her pretty stitch markers, magnets and sock pattern:

And here...pretty pettable yarn...

the swift doing its thing...our wonderful hostess...
I got 2 skeins of sock yarn, one in a teal green and the other in various hues of purple. Matching stitch markers and a sock pattern were included. And if all that wasn't enough -
Yummy snacks too.

I made a start on the cuff of the teal coloured sock while I hung out eating strawberries and chatting, after my yarn was swifted into a cute little cake. Not sure how I'll proceed - I want to find a lacey pattern to show it off. But first, the Hogwarts socks beckon...

Is it only Wednesday?

To describe how my week's been, take today. I left the house at 6:40 AM, and got back at 7:10 PM. I only clocked in 5.5 h at work. Yep, 7 hours travelling. I went to my local office. You see, it was snowing. Barely. On the plus side, I got to listen to 3 episodes of the Cast On podcast (I am up to episode 22 now) and about an hour's worth of "Queen Lucia", recently downloaded from Audible.

By the time I got home I just couldn't face getting back into the car, not even to go to my wonderful knitting group in Border's (Hi Columbia Sip and Knit! Love you guys!). But I did finish my socks tonight, yay!

These are a keeper. Not just because a girl can never have too many knitted socks, but because the left one is half a pattern repeat longer than the right. Ahem.

I'm a bit disappointed in how they turned out though - these are the Waving Lace pattern, by Evelyn Clark, from Favorite Socks by Interweave. I used OnLine Supersocke 100 yarn. The lace pattern hardly shows up at all, so this lovely variegated colorway is kind of wasted. A solid, paler color probably would work better. Ah well.

In other news, mailed my Ravelry yarn swap yesterday. The "crab yarn" was the unanimous choice, and to go with it I made some stitch markers, because my swapee mentioned on her blog that she needed some . I found a great instruction site here. Aren't they cute?

Plus, I got to use up some of the bead stash. (In addition to a yarn stash, I have a bead stash, a scrapbooking stash, and a book stash). There are many theories on stash: I believe that when I supplement my stash I am promising myself the time to use and enjoy whatever it is I'm buying. Though with 7 hour commutes I'm not sure when that will be...

Do you have a stash theory, or - are you in stash denial?