I'm sorry I've been absent

Sometimes, despite our best intentions, life takes over. But I've been knitting again the last few days, and hope to show off a finished object again in the very near future.

Meanwhile, I had a visitor in my back yard yesterday who was so kind as to stay long enough for me to run in and get my camera. Have I mentioned that I love having a 12x optical zoom on my camera? There's no way my old 4x zoom could have taken this picture.

I know I only have a handful of readers, but are any of you owl experts who can tell me what kind it is? And can I tell from the picture whether my new friend is a boy or a girl? I've not ever seen an owl outside of a nature preserve or zoo, so this is all foreign to me.

My blog as a graph

Look at this. It's my blog, in graph form. I'm lost as to how they do it, but it sure is pretty. You can get one of your own here.

Thrift Store Score!

Lately, my local thrift store's yarn section has been comprised of 3 partial skeins of unidentified acrylic yarn and a handful of bent and/or rusty knitting neeedles. But since I was out for a walk with the kids, I decided to pop in just to see what they had. And who-wee was I glad I did. Someone has recently donated a huge lot of yarn and needles. I bought a bunch, but there are still probably 30 skeins of fingering weight "baby" yarn. Part of me wants to go get that, too, because it's a bargain, you know.
Here's what I got:
11 skeins (80 yds each) of Lily Rug Yarn in Wine.
11 skeins (80 yds each) of Lily Rug Yarn in Cream
1 skein of Lion Brand Wool-Ease, in Forest Green Heather
1 skein of "vintage" Brunswick wool yarn, in olive (they call it "Med Lime" but I've never seen a lime that color)
7 US1 DPNs
3 US2 DPNs
2 US3 DPNs
2 US4 DPNs
1 6" stitch holder



My grand total? $9.12 I love a bargain. Now I just need to find a place for all that yarn. The only thing smaller than my stash is my storage area.

A word of advice...

If you are thinking about buying one of those outdoor tent-canopy dealios that every store has out now, do not buy the inexpensive one from Super "Floor"-Mart. My sister bought one on clearance last fall, when the price had dropped from $100 to $25. Today, in preparation for a garage sale this week, she decided to break it out. What better way to host a sale, then under a canopy, in the shade, drinking iced tea.

However, when we went to put the thing together, the wind caught the canopy, pulling the center pin (the one that holds the entire contraption together) completely out of its socket. Since neither she nor I had a soldering iron handy, I used wire ties to get it mostly back together. We took the canopy back off the frame to avoid future damage,. and might try it again later, on a day with no wind. I hope it works by Thursday, when the sale is set to begin. Sitting in the hot sun, trying to sell used baby clothes and old magazines is NOT my idea of a day well-spent.

In other areas, I've gotten nothing done. The office remains 3/4 painted, half of the impatiens I bought last week remain in their little plastic temporary housing, and I still have not attempted to swatch the Leda's Dream Stole. The dishes aren't done. The garden is not tilled.

But at least the blog is updated, and that's the important thing, right?

A happy accident, or something more sinister??

A while back I made a shrug. Just a simple rectangle in a drop stitch pattern to cover my shoulders when I get chilly in the summer. No big whoop. At first, I made it too small, so I pulled out the cuff and added a couple more inches. Then I plopped it here on my desk to wait for me to bother weaving in the ends. Some time later, I stuck it in the bag that hangs on the back of my office door. The bag has become a holding place for all the bits and pieces that need finishing.

This afternoon, I decided that I ought to finish up said shrug, since it is sometimes chilly in here and I wear a lot of tank tops. But alas, this shrug was just not meant to be.

Somehow a hole got in it. Now I don't want to jump to conclusions, but I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that the perpetrator is one of my offspring. I'm pretty sure my cats are too lazy to bother. If I had loved the thing, I'd be sad. But after trying it on today, it turns out I didn't like it so much.

Adventures in lace and ebay yarn.

I bought this merino lace yarn from Yarn Treehouse on ebay. It is beautiful. But it is so very very fine. At 880 yards per 50g ball, it falls somewhere between 'cobweb' and 'gossamer' on the weight chart. I started swatching with it last night, and it's like knitting with a spider webs. I think I'll try the swatch again tonight with it doubled up. It was actually not as hard to knit something so small as I expected (my previous lace-type knitting has been done with fingering and sport weight yarns), but I'd need much better lighting. Knitting by the light of a little table lamp and the television just doesn't work with this stuff. I'll post pictures when I have something large enough to photograph.