Five Days Feels Like Five Hundred...

... when my laptop's in the fixit shop.  It didn't help that I got a call on Saturday afternoon that it was ready and then when I got there and turned it on, it wouldn't boot up.  Arrgh.  So it had to spend the weekend there.  Fortunately I realized on Sunday (finally) that I can post on FB from my phone.  I could probably blog post from there too but it seems like it'd be a real struggle.  Aaanyway, I went in there yesterday afternoon and got it back.  Huzzah!  I probably could have written a blog post last night but it was our anniversary plus WW changed my daily points allowance (took 7 away and, man, am I PO'ed about that) so I spent the better part of the afternoon and evening eating all the wrong things and too much of them.  I'll show them, I'll overeat to punish them for changing my diet.  (Uh, not a great approach.)  So that's why I didn't blog last night.

I've made lots of thing or finished them since last we visited.  Brace yourself, there are pictures of all of it.

I finally got around to finishing the red & brown paisley Dress No. 1.  I like it.  I've worn it just about every day since I got it done on Saturday.  I should probably put it down the chute tonight.

On Thursday I finished OJ's Northern Lights mittens, idiot string and all, and, as predicted, he didn't leave them on long when we were out filling birdfeeders and raking leaves.



 
LC asked if there was another car blanket since OJ had one on his lap and there wasn't one for her.  Meemaw can fix that.  I had a remnant of jigsaw puzzle fleece and a length of Charlie Brown baseball fabric downstairs; I even had a enough binding to go around the edges.  It was a hit because one of the characters on there shares her first name and her daddy took her to a baseball game last summer and she liked it.

I've been working on the Black & Blue Shrug.  I need to work on it more because I really want to wear it because yesterday it was 61 degrees at 10:30 PM and it's maybe 29 degrees today and WINDY.  Really windy.  I didn't find the newspaper so I called the delivery guy and he called me back to say that people's newspapers blew away all over town today so we'll get a credit.  I had to go to CVS to get the last copy on my way to get the van's oil changed or we'd be out of luck, news wise.  The sweater would grow faster if I knitted on it more but I have so many fun thing to make it's hard to be monogamous.

I worked on the heel of the Crazy Z Reds Campfire Sock yesterday in a waiting room and finished turning the heel last night after supper so now comes the slog down the foot, knitting around and around until time to decrease for the toe.  The foot part of socks is when I wish I had smaller feet.




Another quick project like the car blanket (or "blankelet" as OJ says; they correct him but I hope he says it for a little while longer) was picking up stitches and adding a couple rows of ribbing to the convertible tops of these mittens.  The edge was rolling and it annoyed me so I just scooped up some stitches knitted a couple rows of k1, p1 rib then sewed the narrow side to the mitten body so the ribbing didn't flap all loose too.  I wore them today and the edges of the tops are much better behaved.

Sorry I don't have any sky or sunset pix to share.  I've been busy with making and being twitchy because my laptop wasn't here so I felt all off balance.  Isn't that sad?  How many years did I manage to live happily and keep myself occupied without my electronic crutch?  Too many to count but I sure am hooked on it now.  I kept wanting to go look something up, like how to keep the Christmas cactus I bought at the grocery alive for more than a week, and then I'd remember that I was offline and be disconsolate.  I should be ashamed.  Have you seen that supplements ad for Lutien which is supposed to help your eyes deal with all the "blue light" from staring at a screen all the time?  Really?  There's a supplement for that?  Our civilization is doomed.

December 5--Peru, A Featherwork Tabard from the Nazca/Huari Traditional Period.  "Did they eat the birds," Lianne asked, "or just rip off their feathers?"  Mike snorted.  "Of course they ate the birds," he said, "food was too hard to get to waste it."  They stood looking at a macaw and flamingo feather cape some early South American tribesman had worn.  "No woman got to wear anything like this, did she?"  Lianne was always on the lookout for instances of inequality.  Mike was getting tired of being the voice of reason, of always having to defend things men did a thousand year before he was born. 

That's it for today.  It's dark already.  Only 16 more days until the light starts creeping back ever so slowly.  I can't wait.
--Barbara