Running out of yarn

Sorry, I guess I should have asked you to sit down first. I didn’t mean that the world was running out of yarn, or even that I was running out of yarn. But I got eversoclose to finishing a project last night and probably don’t have enough yarn to make it through the bind off. Which I’ve already started.

I do have some long tails on the project from where I had to join the new skein of yarn. I’m not sure that will be enough to make it, but it won’t hurt.

At any rate, it isn’t a terrible crisis, as I plan to make at least one more of these. And I’m developing a Clever Plan to tweak the pattern ever so slightly so that two skeins of the main color will be enough to make another scarf and finish off this one. The contrast color? I have sufficient. (Famous last words, I know, but I can even prove it with math.)

Sigh.

In non knitting related news, yesterday I took all the kids to a funeral mass for a school dad who passed away last week (on the evening of the last day of school, actually) from brain cancer. Ironically, or maybe hopefully, I don’t know, Connor was one of the kids who sang along in a little choir up front.

The dad was 31 years old and leaves behind three little boys for his young widow to take care of. The oldest will be in second grade this fall. There’s a tuition fund started for them at a local bank, and both parents were from local families, but still this is devastating. I spent most of yesterday just being numb about it, and I’m still not sure what I can do to make anything better. I don’t know the family at all, but at a school as small as ours (about 20 kids per grade through 8th grade) I’ll know them eventually — our kids might be dovetailed in ages.

Knitwise, I have the sideways scarf to finish up, as I described earlier. And I’m also working on a 12 inch miter square for Shawn4Equality’s square drive. I’m almost at the halfway point but can’t remember which decrease is better, a k2tog or an ssk. Please, someone let me know which end of the row I should do a k2tog on to make it come out right. (I don’t like my ssk’s.)

I want to get going on a bunch more knitting (can you believe there are three active scarves on the needles after I finish the sideways one? crazy) but we’re hosting a cookout/open-house thang on Father’s Day and apparently the house needs a little attention.

And next Friday it’s my birthday, and I’d kind of like to cast on a little nice thing for myself that I can finish by then. Any suggestions? Geeky projects welcome.

Endless petty pace

Everything is going forward. There is so much going on it’s like we did Hands Across America and all decided to walk to Starbucks together. We’ll get there, and all at the same time, but it’s going to take patience and coordination.

I finished almost all of one of the Christmas knits I’m making (including weaving in the ends, thank you). And I started putting the fringe on my Doctor Who Scarf, then realized I should have done it from the other side. Last night I sat on the couch, and undid each fringelet and turned it around. The fringe is 75 percent done now, and will be finished before Friday.

Everywhere I look, I have a project sitting and waiting for me to give it some attention. Yikes! NaKnitSweMo, Christmas knits 1 and 2 and 3, Bamboo socks…. we won’t even mention the Senior WIPs like Tyrone and the cursed IHS and the lace stole I started on Mother’s Day. Nope, won’t mention those at all.

I just got done shuffling my sets around on my Flickr account so I can post pictures of all the Connor Caps as they come in. I have lost track of how many people have asked for the mailing address, and I know quite a few hats are already in the mail.

If you are knitting or crocheting for the Connor Caps project and are not in the Ravelry group, here’s an extra bit of information I don’t remember mentioning here. I have recently found out that Connor collects postcards. If you want to include one with your hat, I will pass it on to my son to hand-deliver to Connor.

We’re also taking six-inch squares to be seamed up into an afghan. They can be knit or crochet squares, and there’s no deadline. I’ll set one eventually, but this is the wrong time of year to be announcing deadlines for anything. It’s too overwhelming.

Yesterday I got to go with my son to another classmate’s birthday party. Most of his class was there, and it was held at a skating rink. Do you remember all your elementary school skating parties? This was great, and they even played some AC/DC, which was what I used to skate to. Skating to the old school funk was really fun. I want to have my son’s birthday party there, too, so I picked up a schedule on the way out. Would you believe that they have an adult skate during my Wednesday morning free time? With free coffee? I am SO there.

Did you know there is a Roller Skating Association and a National Museum of Roller Skating? I didn’t, but I do now. Thank you Wikipedia!

By the way, I had a good weigh-in last night. You two pounds? Bye-bye and bye-bye. You are not welcome here. Hit the road!

Big Tom

When I turned two I was really anxious, because I’d doubled my age in a year. I thought, if this keeps up, by the time I’m six I’ll be ninety.
— Steven Wright

Happy Birthday #2 to my little man — my friend Jen calls him Big Tom since he’s been underweight and behind the eight ball for so long. But he is catching up fast. He is such a sweetie and a ham.

Of course, the State of Wisconsin thinks he turned two yesterday. Silly trusting me didn’t bother to double check his birth certificate until after his first birthday, so apparently I need to do some legal filings to get it corrected to his real birth date. I was going to get this done in time to be a birthday present — but I didn’t.

My oldest son has wrong information on his birth certificate, too, oddly enough. Right after he was born, someone said brightly, “Look! Right at nine o’clock!” Everyone in the room turned to look at the clock, which was one of those enormous schoolroom types that you can see from the other end of the hallway. It read 8:50. Sure enough, when the birth certificate came, it said 9:00. That genius was the person responsible for reporting accurate information to the state. Sigh.

Anyway.

Thanks so much to everyone who entered the comment contest. I met a bunch of new (to me) knitters and read a bunch of new (to me) blogs, got a lace washcloth pattern to work on, discovered that there’s a whole blog dedicated to tracking knitting blog contests, and found out a lot more than 10 people read my blog. (Who knew! Well, now I do.)

Congrats to Molly Bee for winning! She has yet to pick her prize package.

I guess now I need to knit, and write about it, and post some !@#$% pictures every once in a while.

And everyone has been so kind not to bring this up, but I haven’t been mentioning much chocolate in the blog lately. I certainly haven’t stopped eating it.

That may change. There’s a local (within walking distance) pizza place that would like to offer desserts, and when I stopped in to tell the owner I was thinking of going to baking school, and would he be interested in my homework, he about flipped. I just bought a new pizzelle maker and will be making some samples for him soon. If that works out, I may be baking at his shop one or two nights a week. So I will have dessert pix to share! If WordPress lets me share them.

I’ve also got the WIS&W afterparty to bake for, and I gave myself a pretty ambitious menu to learn. But I’m one of those people who needs deadlines. Desperately. So blast it, it’s time to get started.

But knitwise… I decided to cast on for the bias square for the Doctor Who afghan. The plan is to collect enough squares for two afghans — the U.S. one auctioned to benefit Doctors Without Borders, and the U.K. one auctioned to benefit a hospice that helped care for David Tennant’s mother when she recently died of cancer. They are easy peasy 4 inch garter stitch bias squares, not even mitered squares (I guess that’s next), made from sock yarn. My first one is more than half done, and my plan is to just keep making them until I run out of leftover sock yarn. NOTE: I am NOT coordinating this effort. It originated in the Who Knits? Ravelry group (come and join us!), and I am just making tiny little squares.

I may start doing this with larger amounts of oddball yarn, too, and just tucking them away until I have enough for an afghan for myself. Maybe I’d better put an explanatory note in with them in case I get hit by a bus and somebody finds this bag of squares and thinks WTF.

Next on the list is starting the second Panda Cotton sock, so I can work two heel flaps right in a row and have a cigarette. I’m figuring it will be Just. That. Exciting. (I’m kidding, folks. I have never smoked anything I was offered.)

Knitwise the other projects are the Red Heart tube scarf, the MCY IHS, and Tyrone (sigh). I will probably knit that lace washcloth before I start any of them! That’s just the kind of knitter I am. I have to have a plan so I can thwart it.

ETA (edited to add): The Yarn Harlot has just shamed me into putting Tyrone at the top of the list. If anyone can encourage me through the weird first few raglan rows of sleeves-meet-body, please comment with said encouragement. I haven’t touched the sweater since last October, and it’s quite likely I don’t know what I was doing, or what to do next.

Blogiversary Day

Well, this is my official first birthday of my blog. Someone mentioned in the comments that they thought I had been blogging longer than that.

That’s sort of true.

A few years ago, upon being threatened with having to go work at Target, I came up with a Master Plan for working from home. I created an entity called Wisconsin Crafter, which would be an e-mail newsletter covering craft-related news and events across the state. My quilting group signed up, and I was off.

I started with events in Portage County and gradually added more areas. I subscribed to every mailing list I could find, and had signup sheets at a couple of relevant shows. By the time it became nearly unmanageable, I had about 150 people on my mailing list. It was a little challenging, but really fun.

Part of my newsletter was what I called “Beth’s Luddite Blog.” I wrote a few lines almost every day about stuff that was happening, and put it at the end of the newsletter in chronological order. I did an “Editor’s Message” too, which was a little longer; I have posted a couple of them on the blog.

The next phase of everything was the great Wisconsin Crafter website. It had an events calendar, forums, private messaging, photo albums, a real blog, book reviews, and all kinds of other goodies. Somehow it just didn’t take off the way the newsletter had, but it was definitely easier to do than the newsletter (thanks to the hard work put in, mostly gratis, by my IT guy, who has my everlasting gratitude — see below).

Phase Three was blogdom! Now we were on to something. Free, quick, easy, fun, all that good stuff. And WordPress gives you statistics out the wazoo, which is exactly how I like it. That all started a year ago. I left witty comments on other blogs until, voila! I somehow attracted the six loyal readers I have today. Thank you all!

Wisconsin Crafter isn’t dead at all, but the website is being completely redone (cf. IT guy above, still mostly gratis, thankyou thankyou thankyou) to turn it into a more corporate site for the small publishing I plan to do. The first project is big, really big, but I need to just buckle down and get it together during January, then I’ll be all ready to promote it. And I get smaller project ideas all the time, like knitting pattern booklets and coffee table books about quilting. I hope to have a shopping cart there someday, as well as solicitations for manuscripts from outside writers so I can work as an editor and publisher instead of trying to write everything myself.

But that’s just my odd blogging history. If it seems I’ve been doing this for more than a year, there’s a good reason. Maybe as I stagger under self-imposed deadlines next month, I’ll pull a Lynn Johnston (a la For Better or For Worse) and present “vintage” blog entries from time to time. Children were born, knitting was learned, quilts were started and finished. It was a good time.

Thanks for sharing my crafting with me!

Today’s Impossible List: Pack for a weeklong trip, prepare road snacks, clean the house, prepare the knitting for a weeklong trip, take the dog to the kennel, make a fantastic dinner using everything that must be cooked up before we go (pork tenderloin, mashed potatoes, and fancy mushrooms and onions?), and go to Knit Night.

And knit and knit and knit and knit….

Merry Christmas!

The Wikipedia meme

Here’s my version for June 26. If you’d like to do this, consider yourself tagged, go to Wikipedia and type in your birth month and day. Now list 3 events, 2 birthdays, and one holiday that occurred on your birthday.

Events

1284 – According to legend, the Pied Piper lures 130 children of Hamelin away.
1948 – The Western allies start an airlift to Berlin after the Soviet Union has blockaded West Berlin.
1974 – The Universal Product Code is scanned for the first time to sell a package of Wrigley’s chewing gum at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio.

Birthdays

1898 – Willy Messerschmitt, German aircraft designer (d. 1978)
1961 – Greg LeMond, American cyclist

Holiday

International Day in Support of Torture Victims

The meme didn’t say to look up deaths, but I did. I clicked on Soccer, the dog actor, and found this. How sad. Even my four year old daughter recognized him immediately. Here is another link for poor Soccer.

(this line intentionally left blank)

And, a Ravelry footnote. I finally gave in and added my name to the waiting list. Looks like this is where the action will be, even if I don’t take full advantage of all the features. Then I clicked on something that told me where I was in the queue.

 

Found you!

• You signed up on Today
• You are #18656 on the list.
• 12488 people are ahead of you in line.
• 0 people are behind you in line.
• 31% of the list has been invited so far

Wow, that’s a few knitters huh? Maybe there will be a feature to allow these cyber knitters to find IRL knitters close to them. It would be cool to see someone actually knit. (No offense Ann K. or Brandy, but when either or you were here, did you knit anything? Nope. Maybe next time?)

Home Front knitting

Yesterday was Mr. Beth’s birthday. (All together now: happy birthday Mr. Beth! Okay.) I struck a deal: the only knitting I would do, would be on a project that was just for him. Agreed. So the pattern I picked was one I’ve wanted to try for a long time. It’s a Red Cross pattern distributed during WWII, kind of a knit-one-for-a-sailor deal. I downloaded it from the web site for the Red Cross Museum, here.

It’s a watch cap in navy blue, but it’s the strangest pattern I’ve worked on so far. Maybe I just have to pretend it’s an EZ pattern and trust it. But still.

There are no indications about the thickness of the yarn (I picked worsted weight) or the size of the needles (I picked US size 4, I’m a loose knitter).

You start by casting on 140 stitches. Yes, for a hat.

You work back and forth in seed stitch for six rows, then in the round in single rib for 12 inches. You are supposed to be on three dpns when you work in the round, but I just couldn’t fathom dividing this many stitches on three needles for a hat, so I substituted a 24 inch circ.

The stitches are scrunched on the 24 inch circ.

I feel I may be knitting a woolen motorcycle helmet.

Here’s the best part: after knitting one foot in single rib, I am supposed to knit plain for an inch, then draw up the final stitches and sew up the seed stitch band. That’s it, all done. A fourteen-inch-tall hat two feet around. I guess it would fit any sailor as well as another. Maybe it self-felted during active duty?

I’m just starting the rib part and am wondering why I didn’t notice that almost the whole pattern alternates knit and purl, which I am especially slow at. Because it’s for Dear Husband, and the wool is good (Plymouth Galway), I will press on. But if you plan to knit this hat, or have knitted this hat, please share your experience! I keep telling myself, it was intended to be easy.

P.S. I plan to tour an alpaca farm sometime this week, to see how they are set up and get ideas for my own future farm. Whee!

Last of the thirtysomethings

Tomorrow is my birthday. My kids are 8, 4.5, 3, and just-past-one, and I will be turning forty. Normally I don’t regard my age at all. I came late to the parenting gig after spending a decade in troubled relationships, about which that is already ’nuff said. I try to ignore the chickie-poo tattooed and pierced moms I will necessarily be hanging out with as I take my kids to school and pick them up — it is what it is. Besides, now that I have acquired Instant Knitter Friends, age differences seem to make no difference to them.

But the 4-0, which seems to mean “I have to buy a Miata now” to men (these days, maybe it’s a Mustang), means a different set of things to women. Basically, I now have doctor appointments to dread, and I have one eye constantly monitoring risk factors and mortality. With the two normal eyes plus the one in the back of my head constantly targeted on the children, I don’t know where this other eye is, but I assume it’s there. Maybe it’s the sector of my brain newly dedicated to clicking on links about breast cancer and ovarian cancer and menopause. (What fun!)

Tomorrow I am going to try to shut this eye. I know, it’s the first day of being forty, I should let it do what it needs to do. But it’s my eye, darnit, so here’s the plan.

* The first thing I eat or drink tomorrow morning will have chocolate in it. Instant mocha coffee, chocolate chips out of the bag, chocolate chip mint ice cream — I don’t care. We’re going to start this day right.

*  I am buying myself the cake I want. For about a decade I have wanted an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. Nobody asked, I didn’t tell, I never had one. Tomorrow is the day. I will even share it with the kids. I just want a little bit.

* I am going to knit. Right, how is that different from any other day? Tomorrow I am not going to feel guilty about it or wait until I conquer the world to have five minutes to myself. I’ll just knit, right in front of real live people. If they complain I’ll just remind them that it’s my birthday and I get to do one thing that I want to do. This is it.

* As usual, I will call my mother just about lunchtime, and ask if she’s feeling better now. I just think it’s the considerate thing to do.

That’s tomorrow. Here’s yesterday. The weekend showing went okay, but the house only finished in the middle of the pack with the show-ees. (They want something with more character. Boy, will they live to regret that! Kids these days.) The good news is it showed better than most of the other houses in the same price range, so we’re on the right track.

While they were looking at the house, we caravanned (motorcycle followed by van full of kids) to Milwaukee, dropped off the motorcycle, and returned home. I cast on slowly for the HSS but was worried about dropping stitches off the size 1? 0? needles, so put it away. Then I cast on for the racing knitting, but only knit a few rows before I found myself patternless. (More about that tomorrow.) I put that away too.

Mr. Beth: “We have a two and a half hour drive and you have no knitting?” So eventually I picked up the socks again and carefully worked on my 1×1 rib cuff.

I just dread the first five rows or so of sock cuff. It takes about that long for my stitches to hang together, and until then I am a nervous wreck. It may sound strange to tackle that part in a moving car using double-pointed needles, but it’s the only time I’m not going to be constantly interrupted to provide a drink, stop a fight, clean a room, or change a diaper. So I do my best. As of now I’m still in that tentative zone, but my goal is to finish the first cuff tonight.

I also put up brackets for a curtain rod for the bathroom window, which Mr. Beth framed on Sunday morning (replacing the handyman’s framing from Saturday morning). Pictures coming of that, too!

So I’ll see you tomorrow, with my ice cream cake and my knitting. When I will perhaps be a little bit wiser.

P.S. Happy birthday Sheila, my birthday buddy from March 99 Moms! The card is in the mail. No really, it is. 

Spam Quote of the Day

Hello ))) I know that you don’t like this spam, but theese sites are amazing.

Just to give you an idea of exactly how amazing these sites are, each URL contained the phrase “wet-party.” Not exactly a Continental cast-on video tutorial, is it? Now that would be amazing.

Mid-May catch-up

Where to start? Mr. Beth was working from home last Thursday and Friday after returning from his trip to Maine…and somehow, when he’s home the routine always changes and I don’t manage to blog. I am going to have to do something about that.

I will just give updates on everything I can think of, Dad style, but with a little more detail.

Mr. Beth got home from the Maine trip (via Boston and Milwaukee) on Wednesday afternoon. He brought me the current edition of the Quilter’s Travel Companion, and a huge cake of hand-dyed sock yarn from End of the World Farms. In fact, we shopped for it together last Monday. Via cell phone I gave him turn by turn directions to Quiltessentials, a knitting and quilting store in Auburn, Maine, and he kept talking to me as he went into the store and sifted through the sale bins. Later he used the cell to e-mail me a picture of the yarn. (This was pretty fun. Yes, I know I’m a geek.)

After that conversation I re-dyed the Merino. I mixed up some Grape Kool-Aid concentrate in a squirt bottle, laid the washed and rinsed skeins on a plastic bag one at a time, then applied color, squished it in, and set the color in the microwave. The colors look a little dull again, but I guess it’s better than fakey-bright. I put the skeins in a Longaberger basket and keep carrying them around with me and petting them.

Did I ever mention Lauren handspun this Merino? She did a really good job and it is so soft. I am entertaining several notions of what to knit it up into, but for now it makes a very nice pet. I wish my photos didn’t distort the color and wash it out so much!

We didn’t end up doing anything special for Tom on his birthday, except the kids sang Happy Birthday to him practically every time they saw him. He had his one-year checkup on Thursday, and he had gained less than a pound in six months. The doc recommended we put him on a formula designed for toddlers, and feed him everything we can think of. They also tapped an arm vein to do some blood work to make sure it’s just lack of calories that is keeping him so small and not a thyroid thing. With all that in mind, I skipped the immunizations. We’ll do those next month when he has some more heft to him. (He weighed 14 pounds, 15 ounces.) You can tell this was taken the day after his birthday because Jack hasn’t ripped the band-aid off his arm yet.

The new kitchen floor was installed on Thursday. I know it is an inexpensive vinyl but it looks so much better than what we had. (And yes, we will be putting up some new baseboard.)

While the floor was being installed, the dogs had to be outside in their doggie area. Sometime during the day, they barked, and the neighbors once again sicced the Humane Society on us. They did this twice in a week when we first moved here. Fortunately I think the Humane Society has a note in the file by now that our neighbors have “issues.” Sigh. I’d better not say anything else. I just hope whoever moves into this house does not have dogs.

I snuck out at some point (Saturday night?) and went to the Blue Bead to get some items for stitch markers. I do not wear jewelry but I can see how this bead thing could be totally addictive. I have my rosary done, so I don’t need to get into this further than stitch markers. But still. Neat stuff there, and it’s a very small shop. So I have most of what I need for the stitch markers I have promised I would make, and a little extra.

No bead pictures here, I have to be able to surprise people once in a while!

At some point I cast one for the pair to the baby sock. As of right now I think I’m ready to do the heel flap, but I want to check the pattern directions again. Colleen says she wants to have a sock collection, all of socks that look just like this one. Urg!

Let’s see…the dumpster came on Friday morning and left this morning. Colleen and Jack helped by throwing the couch cushions in. Then Mr. Beth and I threw in the couch. It was great to see it go. Ann K., I’ll bet you’re happy to see it go, too, though you were nice enough not to say anything about how awful it looked.

Oh yes, the Mother’s Day update. I scored big on my favorite chocolates, including Dark Chocolate with Marzipan filling, which I recommended to another blogger (I don’t remember who). And I was totally shocked when Mr. Beth had the kids bring in a huge shopping bag containing…the four skeins of Sirdar Country Style purple yarn I whined about not getting from the Herrschners clearance rack! I blogged about it on a Thursday, and he went there on Friday after work and snagged them. Three. Weeks. Ago. Now, you have to understand that when Mr. Beth buys me something he knows is wonderful, it just kills him that he can’t tell me right away. He is usually begging me to let him give it to me immediately. I don’t know how he kept this secret, but the beautiful yarn was sitting in the back of his car for three weeks.

I have not found the perfect pattern for using the yarn (the sweater I wanted to make with it turns out to call for something super bulky), so I am designing my own seamless sweater a la Elizabeth Zimmermann. I just have to get her EPS explanation in hand so I can figure out the numbers. For the body size I want to have by the time I finish the sweater. I would like to be a Medium.

What else? No quilting progress to report. I still haven’t grafted the Moebius. But I did finish a Hufflepuff beret for the Charmed Knits KAL, and won myself a free craft book for the other HP hats I sent in last week. I get to pick from anything in the Wiley craft catalog, does anyone have any suggestions?

Whew! I am sure I am forgetting something. But it’s good to be back. I missed this!

Don’t mess with Mother Nature

Well, here’s the update on Mama Robin. After I moved her nest from

to

we had some rain last night. While I was talking to Mr. Beth this morning I looked out the window and saw

I went outside to check. No Mama Robin hanging around. One smooshed egg. One empty nest. Three eggs unaccounted for. There are several possible scenarios, but since the eggs weren’t that far along I am hoping Mama is somewhere else making a new nest and laying new eggs. I bagged the nest and sent it along to the elementary school for a science exhibit. Last year I found a cocoon and his class got to watch a moth emerge, so it’s kind of a trend.

No knitting last night, not that I remember. But I did stop at the new quilt shop after a couple of hours worth of futile escapades with an appliance dolly. The short version is the fridge is still in the kitchen, but Mr. Beth will be able to muscle it to the garage this afternoon. (He is bringing me hand-dyed sock yarn from a small sheep farm in Maine, so I will have to be extra nice!)

Oh, yes, this is much better. Now I just have to find places for two filled filing cabinets, three plastic crates, and everything that’s sitting on all of the above, and pull the rest of the baseboard and quarter round. And contact someone to be here to disconnect the gas stove and reconnect it on Friday. And the antiques guy, so he can pick up the desk and chair I’m selling. And add some more color to the Merino. You thought that I thought that you forgot about that, didn’t you? I am taking pictures at each step but won’t do a reveal until the fun is done.

I don’t want to forget Big Tom. He is one year old today! I will be baking mini chocolate cupcakes, but since the kids say he doesn’t have enough teeth to eat them, I thought maybe we would all dine on applesauce, pudding, and Jell-O. First birthdays are a little ridiculous anyway, why not make them extra silly? I will have pictures and stats tomorrow after his checkup tomorrow.

Lots of potential

Didn’t you always hate seeing that on your report card? As in, you had some but you weren’t currently working up to it? Welcome to knitting. It will give you flashbacks like that all the freaking time.

Like, why can’t you finish a garter-stitch scarf? Makes a fine effort and then does not follow through. B-.

And, make the second baby sock already and then a pair of adult socks so you are not giving your Hogwarts Sock Swap Pal the first socks you ever knitted in your life. Truly, she is a nice person and deserves better. Fails to plan ahead for complex tasks. C.

Imagining several new projects before the old one have freed up the needles? Unable to stick to plans, daydreams instead of applying self to present task. D.

And taking nine months to make a T-shirt quilt is bound to get some extra commentary. Needlessly procrastinates. Afraid of success. Perpetuates self-deating fantasies. See me after class for conference.

Yes, I know and believe there are no Knitting Police. (If EZ said so and the Harlot says say, there is no reason to dispute it.) However, there’s always that inner Superego, critic, Editor, or deejay from radio station KFKD (thank you Anne Lamott) to tell you you’re doing the wrong thing, you’re doing the right thing the wrong way, you’re doing too much, you’re not doing enough and why do you bother doing this anyway?

Well, strange as it sounds, I am doing this because I love it. Sometimes love is a struggle. (Ask me how I know.) And with knitting, there’s always the frog pond, your knitting friends, and the LYS to help you undo, reset, and redo when necessary. The rest of life is a whole lot messier than this. (Ask me how I know.)

So, in the interest of looking at the carrot rather than fearing the whip, here are this weekend’s goals and some glimpses of future projects:

* Kitchener up the Moebius. Just do it.
* Cast on for the second baby sock. It’s the quickest pair you’ll ever make. The first one was perfect, so you have nothing to worry about.
* Keep plugging on the Charmed Knits hats. They’re quick, easy, and going to charity. Besides, when the book comes out you’ll want to make all the other patterns.
* Make a square for the Virginia Tech project. You won’t regret it. And since you have a cousin going to VT this fall, consider making her something comforting.
* Start a project for yourself. I know, how about socks?
* Keep working the repeats for the Irish Hiking Scarf. Mr. Beth’s birthday is in July and Christmas is in December. You’re bound to finish it before one of those dates, and you know he will like it.

Now relax and start knitting something. It’s all good.

Oh…by the way…yes, we did surpass Comment Two Hundred. However, I want to put together a little gift basket for that person, and I haven’t had a chance to do that yet. I’m currently lurking on her blog trying to get a sense of what she likes. Oh, and it’s someone for whom I already have a mailing address. So I can shop and send, and she’ll be surprised, and she can do the reveal on her blog. Need any more clues?

And my One Hundredth Post is coming up rapidly. Maybe I should try to have everything off the needles to celebrate, so I can cast on for fresh projects. Any ideas? Oh wait….