Tuesday, October 31, 2006

The Numbers Game

Number of nonstop hours I get to work today - 14.

Number of doughnuts I've eaten to get my backside in gear for an 8 AM class - 2.

How many minutes I was late arriving for said 8 AM class - 3.

How many times I've regretted eating both doughnuts (so far today) - 64.

Number of laps I swam yesterday to burn off past & future doughnuts - 26.

Episodes of Sex & The City I watched last night - 3.

Number of times I thought that 'Steve' from S&TC was really the best character on the show - 8.

Total cups of coffee (so far!!!) - 1 2.

Number of times I've thought an unkind thought about my co-worker - 7 22. ;>

English 101 classes left to teach today - 1.

Hour of the morning when Munchkin woke up - 6.

Number of books I read to Munchkin between waking up & leaving for work - 5.

Number of stitches left on needle for R's clapotis - 67 44.


Number of dropped rows left to go before I'm finished:


(lovey picture courtesy of Keith Haring's estate)


Update - 3:45 PM. Make that -

Number of dropped rows to go before I'm finished:

Monday, October 30, 2006

My Cheatin' Heart

I had some time the other day to try and catch up on my blog reading and so I went a-browsing and a-clicking...... I use Pluck to keep track of everything & keep updated, and I had an overwheming 300+ unread posts to choose from (and only about 15 minutes) and so I resolved to **only** hit my favorite places and skim them quickly so that I could get in the maximum amount of reading in the limited amount of time.

I was doing well until I hit Jessie's site and the following picture.........and then all was lost.


Jessie's Fetching pair of Fetching
In a hand-dyed wool/silk blend that is just......fetching. (Forgive me, I couldn't resist!)

Oh no no no no. I can't! I have a sock to photograph & then unravel (to use an EZ term) then re-knit (not to mention it's mate) and a clapotis to finish (I'm sooooo close I can almost taste it - only 12 more rows of decreasing dropped stitches to go before I'm DONE!) plus Peggers has requested a baby hat plus the mate to the Embossed Leaves sock plus, plus, plus.............

Oy.


Paton's wool for the green - with self-dyed (Kool-Aid & Wilton's) Paton's for the cuff and thumb bits. Love love love at first sight. The above is only one of what will soon be a pair - the first pair (yes, there was a first pair) in solid green was mailed out today to a lovely friend who is currently rehabilitating her mother in Canada after an extremely debilitating stroke.

So that is that. But I plan on watching some Season 3 of Sex & The City tonight and working on clapotis - after all, I can only stray so long before the (self-created!) guilt kicks in........... ;)

And now I must fly - I had to wait until my office-mate left before I could start recording for LibriVox - and I have an entire chapter to somehow complete before Wednesday!

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

As requested!

Two (badly shot) pictures for the curious!

I'll see if I can't find the time to take a full-foot full-sock picture and post it - unfortunately I volunteered for reference desk duty tomorrow morning at the ungodly hour of 8 AM (ouch!) and have to teach library instruction for two series of English 101 classes Thursday morning again at 8 AM (double ouch!) so I don't know when 'twill be done. Maybe Wednesday afternoon I'll slack a wee bit & do it. Or Wednesday night. Maybe I'll even ask Mr. Peggers himself to model the too-long knee-highs so that all of you can get the full effect...


...& here's a quick pic of the work when it was just a wee lad, so to speak.....



p.s. Just uploaded more pics of R's clapotis and J's finished 'Rib & Cable' socks into their respective Flickr links to the right!

Monday, October 23, 2006

...emerging blinking from my cave...

Wow, but it's been a LONG time since I've last been here!

We've had some long, tough days - too much work, too much grading, too many dirty dishes, too many toddler temper-tantrums, too many sick dogs, too many traffic jams..............................

But I'm starting to emerge from where I've been hiding, and I have one FO to show off from - oh - 2 weeks ago that I'm just now getting around to posting. (And 1 other semi-FO to show off {before I - grrrrrr! - unravel it significantly}, and one very-close-to-being-an-FO to brag about...)

So, without further ado! (and forgive their poor quality & total un-edited-ness - it's seriously been a long tough haul these past, oh, 3 or so weeks....)


Aren't they ust too crazy for words? I just hope that J likes them - and more importantly she remembers that SHE was the one who picked out these crazy colours!!!

Mama-E's 'Mousie Masala' sock yarn in 100% superwash. Knitted using an Interweave Knits pattern (rib & cable, if memory serves) - a lovely pattern even if the cable does do some funky things around the ankle area as you pick up the stitches from the heel flap.... Knitted over a too-long period of time - roughly 6 weeks, I'm guessing - and done mostly while listing to Cast-On and the Radio Detective Hour broadcasts. (Thank GOD for podcasts!)

The colours were radically different from one sock to the next - eeny stripes on one leg to wide stripes on the other, striping on one foot with pooling on the other. S'okay for me - I don't mind mis-matched socks OR pooling, but thank goodness Grumperina didn't knit these puppies, you know?

So, on to my bragging then frogging (4 minutes & counting until I have to run to daycare to get the Munch, so this will be FAST) - I knitted all of Peggers' knee-high sock. And he tried it on & mumbled the fatal words "It's too long" - which (I'll have you know) he swore to me that it never ever COULD be. "It can't be too long!" was the exact sentence that came out of his mouth, I think. So, one huge honkin' knee-high will now be ripped back an impressive 12 or so inches to shorten the ankle by a few inches and then the foot will be re-knitted then the sole will be re-picked-up and knitted. Oh well, don't we all always do things better the second time around anyway? And honestly - at a gauge of roughly 5 sts/inch it's not like it takes THAT long to knit anyway. I knit heavily on it while watching Disk 1 of the HBO series "Weed". Funny stuff, that. (K - update - Blogger won't let me put in any more pics, so I'll shove in the knee-highs in a post later this week..........PROMISE!)

So that was the froggin - and the bragging?

I'M ALL THE WAY TO THE DECREASE SECTION OF R'S CLAPOTIS.

It's been a long haul, but man o man this one is turning out nicely.........................

I absolutely promise you a full set of photo-session pics on that one - complete with personalized modeling from R herself. Of course she doesn't know this yet {snicker, snicker} but give that woman a few cups of Starbucks (or rum & cokes!) and she'll agree to just about anything.....

Friday, October 13, 2006

Eye Candy Friday


at last!!!!!!!!!

Thursday, October 12, 2006

For R


Quickly, as I have 10 minutes before I'm due to go and scoop up my little Munchkin...

Monday, October 09, 2006

News & More News

I simply cannot get this idea out of my mind today. I have asked if they still need help with the knitting - I'm hoping they do, but will certainly contribute financially to help defray the costs if they don't...




In other news, I finally caught up on Emily's blog this afternoon and guess what I found out......?

It's certainly a long, strange trip, Emily, but goodness only knows it's the most incredible one you'll ever go on!!!



These two things in such immediate juxtaposition really makes you understand with a sort of an almost physical ~smack!~ how much of a cycle life really is......

Friday, October 06, 2006

Knitting time here I come!!!!!!!!!

Oh Happy Days!

I finished grading all of my 96 student projects. I absolutely MADE myself finish them today because last night was a True Tragedy.

This past weekend we bit the bullet & got my son to start sleeping through the night on his own in his own (!) bed without nursing through the entire (!!) night. This means that I now have a stunning amount of free time to myself in the evenings. For example, I watched an ENTIRE movie on DVD from start to finish Saturday night - ducks, I haven't done that in a full year and a half!

So last night my son went to bed at the amazingly early hour of 7 PM - the little one was exhausted and 'night-night' it was indeed. By the time he was settled & I was done cleaning up from dinner & chatting to some of the guys who were over to visit it was 8 PM. And do you know what I had to do?

(Kate, don't laugh - I know this is how you have to probably spend every night, but those of us who don't have this much - ehrm - homework are seriously spoiled & whiny about it!)

I HAD TO GRADE PAPERS. No, really, it was a True Tragedy.

Two and a half hours later I was finished with the amount I had promised myself I'd finish that night, and then I was so tired I tumbled straight into bed. That's two and a half hours of knitting time totally wasted!

So today I forced myself and pushed through and people, oh, people, I finished them all!!!

Knee-high knitted EZ moccasins, decaf coffee, and rocking chair, here I come tonight!

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Communal knitting

I was sitting in the campus coffee shop today working away on my Mousie Masala sock for J (finished & turned the heel & am working my way down the foot decreasing every other row) and started to think about communal knitting.

You know how you get to a certain point and suddenly whatever it is you're currently working on is...........boring? You were totally excited and could hardly wait to get started when you first came up with the idea, but after a point you just hit that wall and it's just a total drag? And that's when starter-itis kicks in and you abandon that project and move on to something else. Now there's a good chance that someday sometime that old project will suddenly call to you again for a bit - but chances are just as good that after row after row after row you will AGAIN become bored with that same project all over again and set it down for a bit.

So I was sitting there thinking about this and working on my sock when suddenly I though that I needed to live closer to my Mom. She and I could have a communal basket with a variety of knitting projects in it - and we could both pick up & put down those projects as the spirit moved us. So when I was bored with knitting away on the leg of that sock? She could take it over for a while and as it was a new project to her it would actually be exciting! And when she tired I could take it over, and as it would then be in a completely different spot it would now be new to me and I could certainly muster some enthusiasm for a "new" old project! Now of course, there might be a slight issue with gauge, but probably nothing that couldn't be blocked out without any trouble or fuss.

Doesn't this just seem like a totally workable idea? Now if only I didn't live 10 hours away from Mom...................

I put in my KnitPicks order last week - 4 skeins of their Gloss superwash in chili pepper plus two sets of dpns (size 6 & 7) oh no wait - make that THREE sets of dpns (5,6, & 7s) plus two circulars (5 & 6) which I figured should totally cover all the bases needed to start in on the EZ moccasin knee-high socks for Peggers. Now all I have to do is finish the Mousie Masala socks ASAP so that I'm prepared and ready to go as soon as the order arrives.

WOAH! I just checked my KnitPicks order and cast your eyes over this!


October 3, 2006
4:47 AM
Arrival at Unit

Okay, folks, that means that all of the above KnitPicks goodies will be arriving at my door TOMORROW.


..................hmmmmmmmmmmmm.......
.........................anyone interested in taking over a few rounds of a Mousie Masala sock gusset for me?