First and foremost, Barb had her baby this weekend! Yay baby! It was definitely an E Ticket Ride, but both mom and baby are doing great. And OMG he’s cute. And his papa? So proud he’s glowin’ like Three Mile Island. Go see! It’s (obviously) the one at the top of the list.

I finally found the cable to the camera, so today, my dearies, you get photoz! Do try to contain yourselves, mkay?

First up, just for the cute factor the new office pup (wiggly as all getout, and standing on my office mate’s desk. shhh! Don’t tell him!). Our office is chock full ‘o dogs. Big dogs, little dogs, all kinds of dogs. This one belongs to one of the accounting folk, and is generally here on Fridays.

Then we have BFM (big frackin’ mistake) #2. I was toolin’ right along on Shoal Waters and looked down and saw this:

Doh! Proof that I’m blonde and can’t count. Even the basics like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…

So I dropped those two columns back and fixed it and reknit those 16 stitches back up, and now it looks like this:

The color on that totally isn’t representing the way it looks in person, btw.

And then, the finished PFS with BFM #1:

Which looks all kinds of not straight on the bottom edges, but it is, it’s just that the board it was laying on wasn’t even remotely flat when the picture was taken… And

The green arrow shows the broken bit, and the pink arrow shows where the run got to before I stuck a pin in it and stopped it (the yellow and white pins there are keeping it from totally unravelling). If you have any helpful hints on how to fix this, please throw them my direction!

There’s a bunch of other stuff happening in my world at the moment, none of which I’m going to go into, but suffice it to say there’s a great deal of stress and upset and fear and anger, so if my posting continues to be erratic, don’t be surprised.

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Next up!

Next up, now that the PFS is finally out of the way, are the following things:

Shoal Waters from Needle Beetle (in what used to be some of the ugliest yarn ever - some Filatura di Crossa 501 in the most icky shade of light, sickly aqua. It had a close encounter with the dye pot, and is now a very yummy dark blue/purple/blackish kind of color with subtle variations). Brenda rocks. This pattern rocks. I have to admit I started having an affair with it between charts 6 and 7 of the PFS, but it was only that one time! I swear! Now we can be together in public and live happily ever after. The end.

And Leaves in Relief from Knitty. Oooh! Hey! Speaking of Knitty…. Go check this out: Evil Plot #147, which is actually a brilliant idea. Support Team Knitty in the Canadian Breast Cancer Walk by donating a buck for every Knitty pattern you’ve knit. Anywaaaayyyy…. Leaves in Relief. Not 100% positive on the yarn selection yet, but I’m kind of leaning towards… now that I look at my inventory, I’m obviously leaning towards buying some yarn for it, because I have nothing in that weight other than some really yummy alpaca from Great Adirondack that totally wouldn’t work. So. Whatever. I’m gonna make that very very soon.

And the Oregon shawl from K1C2. In Shadow from Knitpicks.

And some more socks. Ooh! And the new pattern from Girl From Auntie. And and and. It’s SO time for me to have 8 or 9 or 15 things going at the same time again. I’ve missed that.

There you have it. Your morning should be complete, now that you know what all I’ve got coming up. I knew you were having trouble getting going without that.

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See? See the lovely picture of the finished shawl? No? That’s ‘cos I’ve lost the damn cable to the camera and can’t upload it. Welcome to my life in a nutshell.

The Peacock Feathers shawl is, however, really and truly, finally finished. Except for that one leeeeeeeetle issue… As I was blocking the hell right out of it last night a stitch broke. Thankfully that stitch was a) right by the edge and b) way up on one of the corners and c)caught before too much unravelling had occurred. I *think* I can spit-splice a new piece in there and redo the damaged place with a teeny little crochet hook. I think. Maybe not. I could be smokin’ that cheap Canadian crack again on this, but I’m pretty sure I can do it. Lord knows I don’t want to try to figure out how to pick up 495 stitches and fix it the real way. I’m pretty sure that would land me in the nuthatch for sure, so this will have to do. It’s a tiny, tiny place, as you’ll see as soon as I find that damn cable…

… which may well not be until tomorrow, mind you, ‘cos I have WAY too much to do today, including going to the hospital to visit a good friend who had a frackin’ heart attack night before last. You’d think my friends would be too young for that kind of thing, but apparently not - he just turned 50 a couple of months ago, but still, that’s 22 years younger than my dad, so the fact that he had a heart attack is freakin’ me the hell out. I’m sure it’s totally and completely freakin’ his wife and kids out too, along with everyone else in the union who knows him. He’s a Good Egg, that Kevin is. Keep a good thought or say a prayer for him and his family, wontcha?

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http://wordsmith.org/anu/java/spirograph.html

(I was going to post the actual applet, as per the instructions on that page, but, alas, it is too wide, so y’all just get the link. Go play!)

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Oy Frieda!

So here I am, all chugging along on The Last Frackin’ Row of the PFS, and what happens? Yeah, I drop two stitches. And the little bastards run all the way back to the last lifeline. Which is 8 rows back. Being that there were 2 moves of the stitch marker that this happened right next to, and everything in those last few rows involved either yarn-overs or decreases, I was, in the truest sense of the word, fucked. Sigh. I am a pebble, I am calm, the river rushes by me, but I am calm. Calm, I tell you, CALM! Fuck. Fuckity fuck. Hooray! I had so much fun knitting those rows the first damn time, I just had to do it again. goddammit.

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That’s the number of rows I have left to go on the Peacock Feathers shawl. And it’s the number of days I’ve been sick. And… no, guess it’s just those two things.

Just three and a half rows to go and that shawl will be DONE! Fini! The end is so close I can practically taste it. I want to go sit in my car and finish it, but, alas, that’d prolly get my lazy ass fired, which would be a Bad Thing.

And, in the useless trivia column, we have this little tidbit:

skein (skayn) noun

1. A length of yarn wound around a reel.

2. A flock of geese, ducks, or other similar birds in flight.

3. Something suggesting complex twists and tangles.

Who knew? I do love that word of the day list.

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Your word is FUCK. You like to come across as rude
and rebellious, and often you do. You also are
intelligent and maybe surprisingly sensitive,
though God help anyone who said that in front
of your friends.

Which Swear (Curse) Word Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Thanks to Lupin Spirit for that one. I needed that laugh.

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I survived the weeks of too much work, too little sleep, almost no knitting, a baby shower, and a wedding in NYC. Y’all have NO idea how glad I was to get home and not have anything else looming on the horizon.

I accomplished fuck all nothing in the way of knitting while in NYC. Not one damn stitch all weekend. I was too heavily sedated on the flight out there to knit, and too freaked out on the flight back to really do more than one row, so the Peacock Feathers shawl is still not finished. I have 14 rows of chart 7 to go, and all of the edging chart(s). Each row is taking about 6 months at this point, or so it seems. And now I’m totally jonesing to be making sweaters instead… Alas. Good thing I’m all over the whole having multiple projects going thing, no?

I’ll write out the NYC trip at some point in detail probably, but the short version:
Thursday: arrived late, slept well
Friday: wandered around midtown, went to the wedding, drank heavily, dropped the moms off at the hotel, drank more, slept well
Saturday: oh god it hurts, cajun breakfest, 3-hour boat tour, dinner in Little Italy, loooooong walk back to Times Square with omgwtfbbqfishstix dessert on the way back, slept well
Sunday: OMG Brasilian fest!, wandered more, beer garden in Queens, subway back to hotel, slept well
Monday: Food? where’s the food? Packed, scary taxi ride to airport, loooooong drive to the house, ahhh home!, slept like a freakin’ log.
The End.

Note the total lack of yarn store action…

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