This has been edited from it’s previous version.
I worked six hours on Saturday, so I don’t feel like I had much of a weekend and made the weekend feel so weird. Saturday, my little sister M called me crying. Hearing her crying makes me feel like I need to cry along with her to make her feel better. I’m sure some people feel that way too when a sibling calls them crying. She had broken up with her boyfriend and needed to get out of her house. Because I had to work, Bryan was sweet enough to pick her up from the train for me. She was at house until yesterday afternoon. I am glad that we were able to be there for her. Based on previous experience, anyone who can help you cope with a breakup can make you feel so much better, even if they do nothing else but get your mind off of things. Bryan has been suffering from a pretty nasty cold, so him picking M up was greatly appreciated. If I sound like I’m repeating myself it’s partly because I might be and also I woke up with a headache this morning and the Excedrin has made me feel very odd. So Saturday evening, M, Bryan and I watched Intimate Strangers on DVD. M fell asleep with George curled up in her arms. It was so sweet how my kitties immediately realized that M wasn’t feeling well and they tried to give her lots of kitty loving. As if I needed another project to work on, I started a scarf out of some Manos yarn for M, it’s the same yarn that she bought for another scarf about a year ago. We modified that scarf into a strand scarf and I have a lot of yarn left over, so I started an elongated stitch scarf for her. It looks quite nice in the Manos. I also asked her about the Bias Lace Shrug in the new Interweave Knits (Spring 2005) and if she liked it. She loved it and I’m going to make it for her with the baby blue Rowan DK Soft that I’ve had for a long time. I was going to make Georgia with the yarn, but I wasn’t thrilled with the sweater enough to start it soon. If I still like it in 5 years I can make the sweater with another yarn. I think M will appreciate the shrug out of it more than I will having a sweater made out of it. It’s beautiful yarn, but I’ve had it for three years and haven’t touched it. I think the shrug will look great on her, too.

I’m so swamped at work right now, I haven’t had time to write.

I promised photos, so here they are.
First, the mandatory photo of the Valentine’s Day flowers that my wonderful husband sent to me at work. I felt so special, I was the first one to get flowers that day. Even when they were really withering, I recevied comments about the beautiful flowers. I thought the roses and a few of the others were so pretty that I took them out of the vase and dried them. I love seeing little dried roses in my cubicle, it dresses it up a bit, even though my cubicle has the reputation for being “the jungle” with several plants around various places in my cubicle.

This is the Crazy Green sweater that I’ve mentioned a lot lately. I’m not tall enough to take a photo of it’s entire width and I wanted you to be able to see some of the interesting nuances of color. Didn’t I tell you it looks like water? Okay, so maybe algae water.

Now on to the handspun yarn photos.
Here is the second hand of yarn that I’ve spun. This is the hank of yarn that I had to reply because it was just a mess of two strands that I had attempted to ply together. I think it looks pretty cool now.

This is the third hank of yarn that I’ve spun. One strand of it goes from brown to cream to blue, you can see a little bit of the blue.

So what am I going to make with these lovely hanks of yarn and their combined yardage of 40 yards? Don’t forget hank number 2.

I will be working them as the brim of a hat. I can’t figure out what other yarn to use, maybe I’ll get some more fiber and spin enough yarn to make a complete hat. :)

I would love to tell you that last night, I got home early and knitted the entire evening, but I can’t say that. I did’t get home until 6:45pm, these late work hours are killing me, and I arrived home just in time for American Idol. So I watched AI for an hour, knit about four rows of the Pagan turtleneck and restarted Bryan’s hat. Then I worked on cards for my secret pal at the Unitarian Church. I made three cards last night and they are all very cute, if I do say so myself. I have about 1 3/4 inches (4.4 cm) on Bryan’s hat so far. It’s going to be a slow going hat because to insure that this is the warmest hat ever for Bryan, since he’s voluntarily/involuntarily bald, I’m knitting a slip-stitch hat with a knitted lining. I know I could line it with polar fleece or something else, but I want to do the entire thing myself. Don’t ask, it’s just something I want to do. Please remind me of this, if I complain about how long the hat is taking me. :)

Let’s just do a quick run-down of the weekend and then we’ll get a bit more detailed later.

Friday - Knit, knit, knit on the Crazy Green sweater
Saturday - finished library scholarship application!, balanced checkbook and knit
Sunday - taught knitting and knit at home

I don’t remember the last time I had such a productive knitting weekend and still got a lot of other things accomplished. My above list doesn’t look like I did more than knitting this weekend. Au contraire, it felt like I got a lot done and teaching knitting to 12- and 13-year-olds is a lot.

Friday evening, I didn’t get home until nearly 6pm, I had so much to do at work. Bryan decided that we needed to relax that night, so we did. For Valentine’s Day, I bought Bryan the Eternal Sunshine Collector’s Edition DVD and it arrived on Friday. We watched the extra disc on Friday evening, there is a lot of cool stuff on the second disc. If you’re a fan of the film, it’s definitely worth the extra money. While we were watching the extra stuff, I was knitting. I worked on the Crazy Green sweater and by the time I went to bed that night, I had about five inches of the back finished. I took a photo, but haven’t uploaded it yet. The sweater looks a bit different than the swatch. The sweater has a very “watery” look to it. With eight different balls of yarn being knitted on alternating rows with no rhyme or reason to the order, the finished knitted object looks like water in the photo. You’ll see what I mean when I post it. Hopefully, I’m remember to do that tonight.

Saturday, we slept in, partly because I was up until 1 am looking through knitting magazines. We both worked out Saturday morning and after breakfast I started working on my scholarship application. By 2:30pm, I was finished. Then we balanced the checkbook, oh so exciting! Saturday evening, as a reward for getting my scholarship application finished, we relaxed. :) Sunday I was teaching a group of Girl Scouts to knit, so I needed all of the rest I could get before hand.

Sunday afternoon, I taught a group of six Girl Scouts how to knit. It was a very trying afternoon. Some of them got it right away and some didn’t. One girl who had never knit in her life just picked up the needles, learned how to cast on very quickly and then quickly picked up the knit stitch. She was off and running, I couldn’t believe it. She had never knit before but it came so naturally to her. A couple of the girls, I really felt bad for because I couldn’t devote the time to them that they needed. That’s one of the hardest things for me as an instructor is to let some people struggle, I want to sit with them and give them the attention that they need, but I have to pay the other students attention they need, too. I was very tired when I got home after class. Bryan wasn’t feeling well, so that was the perfect excuse for us to relax on the couch for the evening and watch two episodes of the Simpsons. I worked on the Crazy Green sweater and now have one row over 6 1/2 inches (16.5 cm) completed. I’m half way to the arm hole shaping!

Finally, one of my photos of my first handspun yarn.

It’s not exactly amazing, but hey, it’s my first yarn. I have another hank to copy over from my camera that was replied and looks much better than the first try in plying. I’m really struggling with getting a consistent width (I’m not sure that’s the right word) of yarn with the drop spindle. I drool over the yarn that people are spinning with wheels, but my current and future living situation doesn’t allow for a spinning wheel. It will have to wait until after Bryan and I are out of school. If all goes as planned, as such my getting into school, we’ll both be out two years from now. :) Any advice on getting a more consistent yarn with the drop spindle, other than practice, is greatly appreciated.

A quiz I saw on L’Allumeur’s blog. Very interesting:

Original post title: “Exploding heads need not apply” (too long for Blogger)

I had a horrible, wreched headache this morning. It felt like someone was squeezing my optic nerve and then shooting some of the pain out of the back of my head. I took two Excedrin and stayed home this morning, but now I’m at work and I have aching in the back of my head and it might be time for another Excedrin. I hate going to sleep and waking up with the same headache. Needless to say, knitting actually helped some of my headache go away by relaxing my neck a bit. Amazing how knitting is so therapeutic for so many aches/pains/illnesses/anger/stress.

I think the headache was spurred by work-related stress, I’ll write more later.

This morning’s knitting relaxation exercise was very productive. I did 1/3 of the heel flap on Bryan’s sock. Then I decided I should work on the Crazy Colors green sweater (to be known as the Crazy Green sweater from now on).
These eight balls of yarn make up the sweater.
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I have about an inch and a half finished and it looks so cool. I’ll take a photo of it after I have another inch or so knit. I’m so excited to see how the colors in this sweater will progress. It’s all just a matter of what ball of yarn that I pick for a particular row or rows.

I’m still waiting to hear about school. This weekend, I’ll be working on my application for ALA (American Library Association) scholarships. Jeez, I don’t know if I can wait another month to hear about school. Whether or not I get in, we’re still moving to Champaign, I won’t let Bryan give up his opportunity to go back to school. If I don’t get in, I’ll get a job on campus or one of the local libraries and re-apply for spring or fall 2006. When I do hear, you’ll hear all about it!

I started to rip out one of my pullover sweaters that was too short just over a week ago and I’ve been taking photos of the process. I’ll post those this weekend. The process started out a bit funny. Not if I could just make myself actually reknit the ribbing and lengthen the sweater.

Have a lovely weekend everyone! :)

Yesterday, I had to take my cat, Chloe to the vet for her skin problem. It’s our third trip in about 6 weeks and I’m completely at a loss. She’s been wearing her e-collar for that long and I feel so bad for her. And George is getting upset that they can’t play together. So we were there for about an hour, I’m so glad that I went prepared. I worked on Bryan’s sock while we were waiting for skin test results and managed to get about 8 rows done. After arriving home from the vet and while I was waiting for my food to warm up (left-overs from Valentine’s Day dinner, yum), I was able to knit about 5 more rows on Bryan’s sock. I was so happy.

Last night, I had my second session of my park district beginning class. I taught them how to purl. The two younger girls didn’t seem to have a problem, although one really wanted to wrap her yarn clockwise around the needle. It wasn’t until I did the “3-12-9-6″ thing with her that it clicked. I told her it’s very natural to want to go clockwise, but in knitting you have to go counter-clockwise. Note to all of you that wrap clockwise: I admire that you can knit the combination way or the other ways that wrap clockwise, but I can’t figure it out and I don’t want to confuse my students. The two women both struggled a bit, but at one point it seemed to click. I started them on their scarves, but unfortunately we ran out of time and I had to explain the seaman scarf pattern in the last ten minutes of class. I’m sure I’ll be getting emails with questions during the week.

After I got home from class, I watched last night’s episode of American Idol, the obsession has started again. :) American Idol was a good sock knitting show last night, so I worked on Bryan’s sock some more. Between the vet, waiting for my dinner to reheat and watching American Idol, I managed to knit about 22 rows on Bryan’s sock yesterday. Now I’m about 13 rows from the heel. :) They are finally getting some attention and the sock is finally growing again. When Bryan came home I showed him the sock and he was somewhat excited, I think he just wants to finally have a pair of handknit socks. Unfortunately, our evening wasn’t all relaxing after he came home, the ants have struck again. I haven’t mentioned them before because I’m so grossed out by them, but we’ve been having problems with ants for months and can’t seem to get rid of them. The last straw came last night when Bryan found ants crawling in the kitty dishes. I’ve lost it with the ants and feel so gross, especially since they’ve migrated across the carpet to the cat dishes. I have no mercy for the ants, I usually am an animal lover, but these aren’t animals, they are a nuisance! We’re going to have our apartment people spray, it’s a last resort since Chloe is allergic to the spray, but we have to do something. I hate feeling creepy crawly no matter where I am. They must be in our wall or something, I could kind of handle it when they were in the kitchen and we’d just spray them with cleaner, but now they seem to be everywhere! YUCK!! Fortunately, they have a long way to travel before they would reach my yarn in a plastic tub.

Today, the girls at work, C and E, wanted another trip to the yarn store. I abstained from any purchases what so ever. :) I helped the two of them pick out yarn for their respective projects. C is going to try cables and E is going to try lace. They both picked out lovely yarns - Rowan All Seasons Cotton for the C’s cable scarf and Debbie Bliss Merino DK for E’s Leaf Cravat scarf. I’m also making the same Leaf Cravat scarf, sort of a work knit-a-long. I am trying to finish my lace scarf up before I start the Leaf Cravat. I’m using left over Bollicina and whenever I run out of yarn is when my scarf will be finished. I’m about 75% or so through the ball, it’s Bollicina and other times I’ve used it I think I’m almost out of yarn but it keeps going. I have a photo that I need to post of it. It’s a very simple eyelet diamond pattern, but it looks beautiful. I’m sure I’ll get quite a bit done on it and Bryan’s sock while watching American Idol tonight. I’m taping Alias, since it and American Idol are on at the same time now. (It’s so irritating!)

I’m still plugging away on the Pagan turtleneck. Over the weekend, I got really sick of purling the turtleneck, so I ripped it out and decided that I would just knit it. I have a little hole that I’ll need to take care of when I finished the neck, but at least it will go faster. Something about purling in the round is so slow and so boring. I’m in no hurry right now to finish the turtleneck. I’ll probably break my promise to myself about finishing Pagan before starting a new sweater, but I figure it’s mostly finished, except for knitting the turtleneck and side seams. Maybe I’ll sew the side seams this weekend and just work on the turtleneck as I feel like it. It’s a summer sweater, that’s why I’m not in much of a hurry to finish the neck. Plus, I really want to get started on the Crazy Colors sweater in the handpainted yarns from Shelridge Farms.

I’ve mentioned a lot of photos I want to post, so maybe I’ll get to that tonight.

I’ve added three new blogs to the list of the ones that I read regularly: Fuzzy Noodle Knits, Knitbrarian and Threaded Thoughts. I also added a permanent link on the sidebar to my wedding photos. I hope to add more photos to that page within a few weeks.

I was just thinking, it’s the middle of February and it I’m going to keep up with one of my knitting goals this year, I need to start another afghan square.

Happy Valentine’s Day. To all of those of you that hate it, I understand, I have many, many years of hating Valentine’s Day in my life. I didn’t like it until two years ago when Bryan really made Valentine’s Day special. He made it extra special when he proposed and Valentine’s Day will never been the same again. He sent me flowers today. I’ll post a photo tomorrow. They are beautiful little pink roses, deep red snapdragons, lavender asters, peach gerberas, lavender statice and creamy white snapdragons. My cubicle smells like a florist’s shop, it’s wonderful!

Yesterday wasn’t as productive knitwise as it could have been. I spent a lot of time trying to update my website. The littlest things seem to take the longest to do. I’m working on combining my currently listening to and my music pages, and my recent reads and my literature pages. I’m really working on paring down my site, it’s become overwhelming and such a monster to keep up.

Last night, we watched Before Sunset and I finished two more diamonds on the lace scarf that I’m doing. The yarn for the lace scarf is left over Bollicina yarn from another lace scarf that I made a couple of years ago. I had almost an entire ball of yarn, and I figured, I could use it up as a scarf. The yarn is a cashmere/silk blend, I’m not going to complain about a short scarf if it’s lovely yarn.

I’ve been listening to the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind soundtrack and it’s perfect music for me for Valentine’s Day. Some people have their song, Bryan and I have our movie. I’ve never seen a movie that makes me feel so romantic and almost makes me cry everytime I see it. When we watched it on Saturday night, I think both Bryan and I were in a mood where we just want to be in each other’s presence and cuddling on the couch helps. :) I think the back of the Tazo Passion tea bag says it best, “True passion is intoxicating and invigorating, soothing and sensuous, mysterious and magical. We just thought you should know what you’re in for.” All of those describe my relationship with Bryan perfectly and then some.