I Can't Believe I Forgot to Post an FO!

What was I thinking when I posted my FOs yesterday? I forgot the biggest, most exciting one. Here it is--the completed Vegan Sari Purse in all its glory!

One More Day...

and then I go to The Clearing to write up on the bluff for a week. Yahoo! I realized last night that I can't stop thinking about the people I wrote about last month. I guess I have to keep going until I hit "the end" so I can put it aside for a while and let it simmer.

I'm glad we're keeping this blog alive. It keeps me writing. I liked writing together again last night. I missed exercises while we NaNoWriMo'd.

Barbara

FO & WIP

I realized yesterday that the Dishcloth KAL people chose the perfect design for September 1--they sent me a birthday cake on my birthday! Wasn't that nice?

And see how far I've gotten on my Noro purse? That's five inches of the black & gray and about an inch of the purple & green (no green yet). It has to be 30 inches long before I knit the handle holders, sew up the sides and felt it, but I'm excited about it. I think it'll be hard to felt and lose the details of color from the threads wrapped around the yarn, but I'll do it. After I get back from The Clearing on the 15th.

Look! I'm Cable-ing!

I started the September Dishcloth KAL yesterday and did both days in one. Then I knit today's rows lickety split. (It might be a--tree?) I wanted more knitting, but not big knitting; I wanted small, fun, maybe even educational knitting.

Ann told me she thought I could manage the August mid-month Dishcloth KAL, mid-month ones always involve learning a new stitch or technique. I decided to print off the pages when they came starting Aug. 15th and save them, since I was in the middle of a National Novel Writing Month challenge with my writing group and was just too busy writing to learn anything new. Our NaNoWriMo ended on the 31st, so today seemed like the day to give cables a try. Sorry the picture is so blurry but there's cables in that there cloth, I swear. And I only dropped a stitch once--so far.

Swag!

I know swag usually means stuff you don't have to pay for, but this was so inexpensive I think it qualifies. I stopped at Ben Franklin on my way to Sam's and Walmart, well, not on the way exactly, but let's just say I went there. BF is going out of business and I went a few weeks ago and picked up some knitting needles and a few skeins of yarn but all of it was only 20% off, not that big of a deal. I figured everything would be really picked over because all inventory is now 70% off, and I was right. There weren't any more needles or hooks, and there was very little yarn, but I did manage to find some. What I found was 5 1-1/4 oz. skeins of Lion Cashmere Blend, which is merino & cashmere & a teeny bit of nylon--3 navy, 1 cream, and 1 black. There were 2 in powder blue but I'm just not going to buy powder blue yarn even if it is cashmere. The other 2 skeins are 100 g. of llama & wool--dreamy! Don't know what I'll make with this swag but I'm guessing it'll be for me.

I also swung through Walmart's yarn dept. with the express purpose of buying solid color cotton yarn. I bought 4 skeins of variegated. I'm not even posting a picture. I am incorrigible.

Birthday presents! *and Noro*

I should really be cleaning the bathroom and vacuuming in preparation for having my writing group over tonight for a post-noveling party, but I don't wanna. It's my birthday and I don't wanna. (Could I have a little cheese with my whine?) *ahem* Actually I've spent most of the day knitting on my vegan sari purse handle(s) and baking a chocolate covered cherry cake, so spending probably less than an hour swabbing out the toidy and sucking up the grass clippings and onion skins from the carpet won't take up too much of my day. I'll get to it in a minute, but I want to show you what I got with my gift certificate from Ann. Jenny works at Barnes & Noble and she told me on Thursday that they have my favorite Little Miss Matched socks on sale, so I knew what to do. I marched right over there on Friday morning with my gift card in my hot little hand and snapped up one of each before the vultures got there and scarfed them all up. Then I perused the bargain section and found a knitting book, Chick Knits, that has a very useful looking component they call a techniques guidebook, with excellent close-up photos of actual human hands performing feats of knitting magic like purling and cables and grafting. Plus they have a nice array of stitches pictured and clearly described. And there are 15 project cards graded from 1-3 by difficulty. Hey, I might get brave and knit something more complex than a purse some day. Ann, I wanted to show you that I used your present for good.

After lunch, I picked up my knitting bag to keep working on the shoulder strap and thought the bag was heavier than it should be. Look what was inside! My birthday spatula from my darling husband. Isn't it cool? I love the colors. I'm glad I didn't have to search for my gift spatula this time.

I've been meaning to take a picture of the skeins of Noro Kujaku I got for 40% off a couple weeks ago but kept forgetting. This morning I remembered and here it is. It's a bit hard to see in the pic but every once in a while there's a 2 inch section of the yarn tightly wrapped with the colorful cotton thread that is spread out over the rest. I think it's cool looking. I plan to use it to make the Felted Bag pattern on Lion Brand's website using the black and gray for the body and the sole skein of green and purple for the stripe, with bamboo handles. Should be a good first felting project, simple and rectangular.

WOO-HOO!

Jenny! You made it! I knew last night that you would. I am in tears after reading your long post. You got it; you finally got what I was trying, awkwardly and clumsily, to say all month, and you said it much better than I ever would. This was an exercise in permission--permission to babble on paper, to write what you were feeling. Wear your Novelist pin today with pride. You did it.

See you, Jenny and Adam and Bob, tonight for chocolate covered cherry cake, whatever drinks you bring, Don's ice cream drinks, and admiring our piles of novel written pages!

--Barbara