we're about to leave for the hospital for the long-awaited shoulder surgery. i suspect i won't be knitting, spinning or blogging for a couple of weeks....
I stayed home from SNB tonight because I've been really delinquent in my obligations to the mel-o-dee, and figured that I'd use tonight as my night o' rest. Spent it watching movies and making jewelry and drinking wine and discussing our looming life decisions with TK.
Fortunately, all looming life decisions have been made easier thanks to the good people at the Ann Taylor factory store. Did you happen to go into either Ann Taylor or Victoria's Secret during the holiday shopping season and notice that everyone was selling obscenely expensive and absurd cashmere sweatsuits/loungewear? I remember thinking, who the h*ll is buying these $190 cashmere sweatpants.
Nobody, as it turns out. Or, not as many people as Ann & Victoria had hoped. Because on Sunday I got a pair of cashmere sweatpants (in petite, even) at the Ann Taylor factory store for a whopping $19. That's right: nineteen dollars.
So while I'm dreading my upcoming surgery, I'm taking solace in the fact that my recovery will be aided by my new cashmere sweatpants.....
I saw today that the newest Knit Lit book, Knit Lit the Third: We Spin More Yarns, now has a cover design and is still on track to be published in the fall. Somehow seeing the cover made it feel more like it's actually going to happen. There will definitely be a big party at our house to celebrate the publication of my opus, "Stop Looking at My Booty." The question, of course, is whether that party will be in Alameda or Anchorage. Oh, the weight of my indecision.
so somebody found my blog by searching for "the rumpelstilskin problem." i tried the search in yahoo and, sure enough, was like the second or third entry. i tried it in google and got nuttin'. go figure. (google, why do you hate me?)
meanwhile, lace scarf = coming along, coming along. i'll have to move it onto bamboo needles for the flight up to alaska this wednesday -- seems like the best chance for getting it done before the surgery....
speaking of alaska, i'm hoping to get in a visit to the musk ox farm while i'm up there. i'm sure there is more than one musk ox farm, but i'm thinking of one in palmer. maybe i can go on saturday. terry thinks he's taking the rental car to drive to homer for a kayak instructor class that day (homer being about 5 hours in the wrong direction), so we may have to rent a second car (!) ... unless i can get one of my anchorage friends interested in musk ox. maybe irene will want to take the kids -- it sounds educational, right? although musk oxen might be a little scary for the under-four set....
just a note to say that the SNB is still going strong. we had 2 new visitors this week, including my friend jocelyn who learned how to knit that night! she did splendidly, so hopefully the pirates didn't scare her off.
the other visitor (whose name i didn't catch) is apparently an experienced and prolific knitter -- she brought all kinds of samples of prior projects to show ... including her floor-length (felted?) coat! wow! i mean, i was psyched just to make a felted bag. come to think of it, that raises all kinds of questions about how one would felt a garment that size (in light of prior tragic felting disasters, such as a certain unfortunate baby tote...). who knows -- maybe it wasn't even felted.
but speaking of felting and difficult projects, amanda amazed me by being willing to tear out her entire herringbone-stitch computer bag (from the new SNB book) - she was about 6 inches into what looks like a hugely difficult project. apparently it has to be felted and she'd concluded that once felted it wouldn't be wide enough to hold her computer. talk about self-discipline. she'd put SO MUCH work into it.
then again, i tore out 3/4 of the black tank top (from interweave knits...) last summer when i discovered that b/c of gauge problems (exacerbated by using a different thickness of yarn than in the pattern) it was going to be way too tiny. it was so painful, though. and i still haven't gone back to that project. i think i need to double/triple-check my math.... maybe i can do that during my june knitting hiatus, so i'll be ready to jump back in as soon as my arm comes out of the sling!
okay, it is officially true that i am the world's worst blogger. things have gotten so busy around the casa that i've neglected knitting, spinning and (by a parity of reasoning) blogging about knitting and spinning.
to make matters worse (depending on who you ask, i guess), it is also official that i'm having shoulder surgery on may 27th, so who knows *what* that'll mean for my crafty pasttimes.
i had to withdraw from our sheep-to-shawl team, about which i am bitterly disappointed. (some of the girls from the mel-o-dee will be sheep-to-shawl-ing it up at lambtown USA in dixon, CA this july. i'll certainly be there cheering them on if nothing else. unless i've moved to alaska by then, that is).
on a non-yarn-related note, i've also been pretty busy lately doing beadwork. i guess i go through little creative energy cycles, and the latest one has invovled making necklaces and earrings. and selling them, which is an added bonus.
but i am still ... slowly ... knitting away at the lace scarf and calista's blanket. she's getting baptized next saturday and there's no way it'll be ready for that. maybe for her 6-month birthday (in june). or, um, her 1st birthday (in january).... it's a big blanket, as baby stuff goes! it's also heavy; maybe transferring it to turbos will speed things up, as it were.