Close but no cigar

I was really hoping to post an FO by now but as you can see, the sweater is not quite done yet.

It's not really freakishly short - part of the sweater
is hanging off the edge of the table. For some reason I didn't notice
this until I loaded the photo.

Despite my big plans for this first post-ENU week, I haven’t gotten much knitting done.

I’ve been working on a new database development project at work and there have been a few ‘later than usual nights’ at work. Also, Mr. CPA and I have this new and improved plan to get to the gym more regularly before we transform into hunched, chair shaped creatures with hands permanently fused into keyboard tapping claws as a result of our long days spent as cubicle dwelling computer users. All of which combines to not leave much time for knitting. I suppose there was a little extra time in there but I wasted it eating dinner* and doing laundry (because my workplace is still not ‘clothing optional’ **).


However, I believe we have rain in the forecast for this weekend so I may get just enough quality knitting time in to finish this up.

As of this morning I’m on Ravelry! You can find me there as ‘yinandyarn’ if you’re there too and want to look me up.

I haven’t had much time to look around yet, but it looks like tons of fun and I suspect it could be a somewhat addictive. I sat down this morning planning to only set up my account and was still there an hour later.

I played around just a bit this evening to enter a project only to find out that I can’t put any project photos up unless I have a Flickr account. I’m not really sure I want a Flickr account so I may be photo-less until there is an alternative photo upload method coded in.



* a dinner which, I would like to point out, I did not cook. bwahahaha!

** eeeeew, thank goodness! That's quite the mental image there.

Operation Baby Bird

Today is the big launch day and we’ll be headed north to Empty Nest University (ENU) to get the youngest baby bird settled into his dorm.

Of course, this isn’t quite the momentous event that we were anticipating what with the recent unexpected arrival of the oldest baby bird back at the parental nest, but it’s still a pretty big day for all of us.*

We’ll have the added bonus of dealing with the horrible Friday traffic in both Seattle and Tacoma in the same day so the trip home should be also memorable.

I’ll be using the long drive to get some knitting time in. The sweater is getting a bit bulky for travel knitting, especially given that the truck cab will likely be stuffed to capacity, but it may go anyway since I'd really like to finish it up.

from Close To Home by John McPherson

*I have already informed anyone in the house that will listen that with the departure of the youngest dependent from the house I do not expect to ever cook dinner on a weeknight after work again. (and, yes, I realize this isn’t likely a realistic expectation but I do intend to enjoy the fantasy for at least a couple of weeks, thank you very much).

Progress of the non-negative sort

Sweater #8 from Reynolds Lopi Volume 18
(stitches not really as wonky looking in real life
as they appear in photo)

A small bit of forward progress was made on the sweater last night. We were watching a good movie and my knitting wasn’t especially speedy. Or I should say even less not-speedy than usual.

We watched Sweet Land, an independent movie based on the short story ‘A Gravestone Made of Wheat’ By Will Weaver. Not your typical Hollywood film and so much the better for it. I really enjoyed this film and so did Mr. CPA. You can read the synopsis here.

We're currently getting our movies from Netflix. Not only has this saved us a small fortune in late fees (who can remember to return movies on Thursday night?), but it’s convenient and there’s quite a large selection of the foreign and independent films we enjoy. Plus? No driving to pick-up and return the movies.

An added bonus is that Netflix has never called us to say we haven’t returned a movie when we actually have like our local [insert major national chain store name] video store did…a lot. Their employees seemed to be in the habit of taking our returned movies and restocking them on the shelves before scanning them in as returned.

The very last time this happened I let the calling staff person know that if I had to get in my car and drive all the way up there only to find the movie in question returned and on the shelf as I had the previous times I was definitely not going to be happy (the insinuation here being that really neither would they). This was followed by a hasty, “Umm, well let me go check the shelves real quick” and then an Emily Litella-like “Nevermind” when the person returned to the phone.

Knitting + Narcotics = ???

If you answered “a quick trip to the frog pond” go to the head of the class!!

Right back to where I started...
'TINK'ing back is very meditative
and practically just like knitting (especially in a medicated state)

I’ve been home recuperating from surgery. I had lots of ambitious plans to spend my recovery time knitting and catching up on all the email and blog reading that I’m so woefully behind on, but as usual actual life events did not follow my carefully pre-scheduled plans.

I felt pretty good Wednesday after coming home from the hospital, I just couldn’t manage to actually do anything. The same pain medications responsible for that general feeling of well-being also made it pretty much impossible to accomplish anything other than groggily watch TV* (and I think I’ve seen about as much HGTV, Flip this House, Project Runway, and Top Chef as I can stand for now).

I tried reading some email and knitting blogs but found that I was just sort of semi-dozing in a seated position in front of my computer monitor so it was back to the sofa for more couch potato action.

Sometime in the evening knitting seemed like a good idea (note to self: Stranded knitting? Charts? What was I thinking?). I think you can see where this was headed. After my little exercise in negative progress I put the knitting away for the evening and gave up on getting anything done.

Yesterday was better for the alertness factor and I did manage to do a few things but I was still much more tired than I anticipated, like when I sat down to rest my eyes ‘for just a minute’ and woke up three hours later. I had also decided that I didn’t need any pain medication yesterday and that went pretty well right up until about 3:00 pm when my body let me know in no uncertain terms that it was not really on board with my whole ‘ibuprofen only’ plan.

So, progress on the ‘to do’ list at this point? Ummm, not so much really.

We’ll see how today goes. I am feeling much better so far. So much so that I probably feel too guilty to sit on the sofa knitting with so many other things piling up and vying for my attention around here.




*I will admit that I'm pretty much a total light-weight when it comes to medication.

Happy New Year

May you be blessed with a good and sweet year!