I finished the Spring Mystery Shawl (finally!) very (very!) early Monday morning. I ordered my wire blocking kit on Tuesday, so it'll be a while before pictures will go up showing this one.

That leaves me with the Anniversary Mystery Shawl (a pi-shawl), which is the one I've ripped out a bajillion times already. I'm slowly working my way through Clue 2 and hope to be on to Clue 3 this evening. (Yes, for the very observant, it's 4:15 in the morning and I'm up, writing a blog entry....)

I've got a doctor's appointment at the very ungodly hour of 7:30am and I've pretty much given up getting any sleep before the appointment. So, I figure, I'll come home and crash afterward.

I'm expecting yarn to arrive tomorrow for two upcoming shawl projects: one is Mom's shawl. The other, is Goddess Knit's Dracula's Bride, which I purchased some time ago but finally got around to ordering the custom colorway I had in mind. I've got some concerns that the circles as I've charted them in Mom's shawl might go a little more oval-ish than I want, so I'll probably start with that one next.

There's another Mystery KAL starting Saturday--a Faroese shawl--but my yarn is delayed (through no fault of my dyer), so I'll start that one behind schedule.

I think I've missed a month or two of my reading lists for this year.... *sigh* I'll have to root around and see what I've been reading. As far as audiobooks go, I've devoured the first four books in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series. That is truly outstanding listening. In fact, I would recommend listening over reading, to truly capture the places best. Davina Porter narrates the ones I bought from Audible (are there any other narrators out there doing Outlander?) and she does an amazing job.

In contrast, I had to stop listening to "The Immortals" by Tracy Hickman precisely because of the narration. The narrator? The author himself. And it's not "narration" but a sort of embellished presentation, with some sound effects added in---very very annoying. If I wanted to listen to a radio play, I would. I wish I could get my credit back on that book.

Oh, I got to get my geek on last week. We've got one of the Mac Powerbooks (codenamed Pismo), which was the last Mac I used regularly. Long ago (back in 2005?) one of the cats no longer residing with us (I'll leave it to you to decide why) managed to knock it to the (then concrete) floor---totally killing the screen. Randy was given another Mac Powerbook and we planned to swap the hard drives so I could get to my old genealogy files and do a GEDCOM dump. Only, it turns out, the free computer isn't another Pismo, but a Lombard.

When swapping the hard drives didn't work, I thought, well, maybe I can swap the monitors. Nope. Now I have the Pismo back together, minus it's "head". I think that'll be our new Halloween scary story: The Headless Pismo! I am debating bidding on the head over at ebay.

Since I just dropped *mumble-mumble* dollars on the Interweave Press Hurt Book Sale plus the blocking wires and some more books at KnitPicks during their 40% off books sale....I'd probably better wait.

Still, check out the titles I'm scoring in these two orders:

Not bad, I say! I can't wait 'til they get here! Oh! Plus!!! I just ordered several cones of Peaches n' Creme! ::rubs hands in glee:: Fun!

Oh, hey...look at the time. I've got to get up in an hour. Like I said earlier....I'll sleep after the appointment. Zzzzzzzzzz

I think I'm going to ritually burn a pattern.

Honestly, it's not the pattern's fault, but hey....someone has to pay. I'm working on the Anniversary Mystery Shawl by GoddessKnits, celebrating her store's 3rd year. It's a pi-shawl, with each clue doubling in size. I managed to get the first clue done, was halfway through the second clue and had to set it aside to work on the Spring Mystery Shawl, which was 1.5 clues behind---and I'm really eager to finish that one. I finally got within 4 rows of being caught up on the Spring Mystery and (since the last clue wasn't out yet) set it aside to work on the Anniversary shawl. Here's some pictures during Clue 4, I think:

Clue 1 and Clue 5

Clue 2 and Clue 4

Clue 3

When I picked up the Anniversary shawl last night, the stitch count was wrong. I dropped decrease stitches when frogging a row back several times. I started working on it at row 9 of Clue 2 and ended up back at row 6, then had another problem and frogged again...and again...and finally, took the whole damn thing off my needles and frogged it back to nothing. sigh

Then, today, the last clue for the Spring Mystery Shawl was released...and reading it over, I'm totally lost. Totally. Lost. So, do I work on the border which eludes me or do I cast on for the umpteenth time for the pi-shawl? Maybe a ritual pattern burning would somehow help?

On the fun side of knitting, I spent Friday afternoon, teaching a friend to knit. I learned a couple things myself. First, I am a horrible teacher. I'm a Sinister Knitter, she's a righty. Now I know what it's like for a righty to try to teach a Sinister Knitter!

I also learned that it's a process. There's a couple small things to learn and then (much like math), you build on that. So, a cast-on, the knit stitch and the purl stitch. Once you've got those, you branch out into k2tog, s1k1psso and so forth. We only got as far as the knit stitch. I'm not even sure I showed her a good cast-on. But, I did leave her several of my books which I've learned from, so she can read and learn what I didn't do a good job explaining. Still, she was knitting!

I showed her my mom's favorite dishcloth pattern, so she could work on something that only needed knit stitches. I just had to show her how to do a yarn-over. I was reasonably sure I couldn't work on lace while teaching, so I worked on the beginnings of my own basic dishcloth. I'd forgotten how soothing mindless knitting can be. In the process, I think I simplified the pattern, so there's less "which row am I on?" Instead of increasing at each end every other row, I decided to increase at the far end every row. Now, there's no need to stop and check "which row is this?"

With the reminder of the joy of mindless knitting and me becoming an "Auntie", I think there's going to be a baby blanket in my future!

I started to write a post, just to get rid of the snail egg pictures at the top of the page every time I load the site. Ugh. But the act of creating this entry reminded me that I do have something to share!

I've completed the main portion of the pattern for Mom's Trinity Wedding Stole! Yes, I have pictures....sorta. See, so far, it's just a pattern. I grabbed some screenshots from OpenOffice and worked them up in Gimp. There are three panels:

This is the center panel. It's viewed on its side (knit from the bottom of the image to the top, but worn with either the left or right side "up"). The center design is of Borromean rings, which evokes the Trinity. I also use it here to represent another trinity: that of husband, wife, God in the marriage, based on the Christian tenets I'm familiar with.

This panel is placed below and above (upside down) the Borromean rings. The idea for this is Mom's love of the overlapping/interlocking rings design. I'd hoped to do multiple rings overlapping, but it would have begun to rival the train on Princess Diana's wedding gown at that point!

The final panels in the main portion are at either end of the stole. This is perhaps the most familiar motif, the Claddagh, usually seen as a ring. I'm tickled I could bring this into the design and connect to Mom's Irish heritage.

All that remains (from a design perspective) is the creation of a border. I'm putting that off as I'm in a KAL where I think a border will be added last---and I want to understand how they work before trying to design one.

I'm already talking to Susie about the colorway to use. I decided on Jaggerspun Zephyr Wool-Silk 2/18, so that has simplified things a lot. As soon as I'm done with the GoddessKnits Spring Mystery KAL, I'm hoping to cast on for this, using more of the "bottle green" Zephyr as my test-knit.

In other news, I'm counting the days until my doctor's appointment for my fibromyalgia. See, I forgot about the three-month wait to get in for new patients---and I've been gone long enough that I count as a new patient, darn it! I've already called my SC doctor for a refill, which he graciously called in. But it was only for 30 days. And since I'm rather scared of going completely off the Cymbalta, I've been taking only half my dose 2 out of 3 days. I need to count out my remaining meds and see if I can go back up to the full dose again.

And here I was wondering if I'd be able to go back to the 90mg/day, instead of the 120mg! Not bloody likely, I'll say!

So the house is less clean than I'd like. The kitchen isn't staying immaculate and the two rooms with carpet aren't getting the once-a-week I'd like them to get. With the gate blocking the path into the laundry (we're afraid of the ferrets getting outside via the laundry vent), I've been asking Nick to help with hauling laundry to and fro and having him play with my brand-new machines. *sigh*

And I've been knitting a lot of lace. *huge grin* Let me just say this: if you dye yarn (especially Zephyr) but don't/can't knit lace, then contact me and we'll make...arrangements *knowing nod* Mmhmm. That's what I'm saying.

I've been listening to Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series via audiobook/Audible. Davina Porter narrates this series---and she's doing a bang-up job of it too! Half the time, I'm walking around with a thick Scottish brogue in my head, talking to the "wee bairns" in the fish tank, calling the ferrets, "wee lassies and laddies", and thinking, "Och, aye" to everything around me. Mmhmm. Hehehe.

If you're at all interested in historical/romance/time-travel fiction, you've got to check this series out! It's listed in the science-fiction section on Audible, but I think it's more "historical romance"---though not a "bodice ripper". And it's loonnnnggggg! I think the books are up to 40-some-odd hours. *contented sigh*

Which brings me to my schedule-flipping. See, I settle down to knit on my lace around 2 or 3am (earlier if I can). I was doing a good job of just knitting for an hour and then going to sleep. Then I started this series and that's all gone to pot. Now, I'm knitting until the sun comes up. Or rather, I'm knitting for a couple of hours, tired enough I'm afraid I'll screw it up but I can't stop listening, so I'll pick up my sudoku book and work several of *those*....while the sun comes up! So insane.

On Tuesday morning, I finally went to bed at around 8:30am. I slept until 8:30 that same evening. Around 12:30 Wednesday morning, I went to bed, still exhausted and slept fitfully. I finally got up around 4:30...or was it 5:30?...with the headache from hell. I was hurting so bad I was crying. Two Excedrin and two mugs of Earl Grey tea later, I wasn't quite so miserable, but defnitely not ready to dance a jig. I managed to almost repeat Monday night's stupidity again, but finally just hit the pause button and turned my light out. *sigh* How old am I? I should know better!

Maybe I should just go knit now and get my fix in before bedtime!

I've spent the last few days trying to get more of my yarn stash photographed and entered into Ravelry. As I spend more time knitting, I've learned to recognize yarns I won't want to knit socks with (yes, there are a few) and I added them to my Stash-->trade page on Ravelry. Now I can start connecting the yarns to the projects I have in mind.

In the midst of all this photography, I've been taking pictures of the pets doing fun things and even some pictures of knitting. I use the term "photography" at it's most amateur level, despite some little trade tricks I picked up growing up with a photographer. I'd love to create one of these:

That would make taking pictures of my knitting so much easier. For now, you get pictures like this:

That's my work on GoddessKnits' Spring Mystery Shawl. You can click on the pictures to see them larger, if you'd like. I'm using Jaggerspun Zephyr Wool-Silk 2/8 in "Bottle Green" (I bought a whole cone!) with a Czech glass 6/0 seed bead mix called "Oceanic Mix" from Beadaholique.

When I'm not actually knitting these days, I'm being entertained by my zoo:

Click on any of those images to see the flickr page for them. I'm trying to add descriptions as I go---but there's been a lot of uploading lately! I'm up to 90-some odd yarns in my stash now. Wow! I'm debating whether I should put my roving in there as well. I mean....it is stash, right?

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it here or now, but Randy's boss from the Racket is coming to ASU to work with him at the Mars Space Flight Facility! I'm totally excited about that: we'll get to hang out with Chris and his wife! (Note: I know her name, you might know her name, but on her blog, she posts as "excruciatingly" and on her husband's blog, he always calls her some variant of "the wife". Despite her being a big blogger in Savannah, I sure don't want to be the one who puts her name out there for the world to write down! *grin*)

Privacy is an interesting concept in this day and age, isn't it? I always think about it when some news program is running "stock footage" of certain people-types for health or social topics. Like the videos of overweight/obese people when new findings regarding weight come in. They always show these really heavy people minus their heads. Do the video guys who go out and film this have to get permission to use the footage or does it fall under some "freedom of expression"?

If I know you in real life and I want to blog about something you and I did together, am I intruding on your right to privacy? Here on my blog, I use real names for everyone I do name, so I try to stand in the shoes of anyone I might be talking about and see if I'd mind that kind of information going on someone's blog. Perhaps my father wouldn't like what I said in bad news and good news, but I spoke to him and told him what I'd written--just told him, 'cause I'm not expecting miracles and progress here.

Anyway, chime in in the comments with your thoughts on privacy and blogging (I'm sure that topic's already been done to death by others.... now it's my turn!).

I have taken to lace like a duck to water. I love working it. I'm working on two shawls right now. One is from a KAL that I started late and has already finished, but I'm not done yet. Part of the reason I'm not done is that I set it aside when the KAL I joined "on time" has a new clue up.

The first one ended up becoming Imbolc (Rav-link). I'm working it on US5 needles, with Malabrigo Lace in "Alpine Pearl" (I think).

The second one is still going on, so is currently listed in Ravelery as Spring Mystery Shawl. I'm working this one on US5 needles as well. This time, I'm using Jaggerspun Zephyr Wool/Silk 2/18 (which I bought a whole cone of! This is a beaded, rectangular shawl, so I'm using "Oceanic Mix", which I really like.

But, I've learned something already in this new shawl. Heavy dangly stitchmarkers don't mix with light, complex lace. They get caught in the YOs and when you've got ten or fifteen of them on your circular cable...they get heavy. So, I went searching for something nice, non-rubber (remember the ferrets like rubbery things?) and found a wonderful little shop on Etsy. (Of course!) This is the result of a couple of messages back and forth with Kate, of Spindle Cat Studios:

Those are sized for my US5 lace needles. And they are just right! (Don't let my crappy camera skills detract from her amazing work. They're way more beautiful in person!

Take a look at some of her other work:

Kate's really awesome about custom orders, as you could see from my wonderful set above. Go shop and tell me what you end up buying!