Thursday, December 23, 2004

One and a half days of knitting time left!

Forget shopping time -- once you're into this knitting thing it's all about knitting time. I just want to wish those knitters out there who are still in the last desperate hours of project completion the best of luck -- may the caffeine gods smile upon you, may your tired fingers make no errors, and may your FO's be graciously and appreciatively received.

As one who has dropped out of the race, I nevertheless made mucho blue cardy progress over the last couple of days while on a brief skiing trip to Bear Valley -- the snow was uninteresting and not terribly plentiful, so we skied little and I knit lots! I finished the right hand side, and am looking forward to getting well into the left side on the plane tomorrow. The gauge continues to be slightly off, which is worrisome -- I think I can block it fine, but now I'm worried that the slightly bigger pieces will cause me to run out of yarn! I've decided to NOT do the pockets until I'm quite sure there will be enough. I can always put a cute embroidered fish on the moss st side instead of pockets.

I'm off to Illinois in the am, so happy knitting to all and to all a good night!

Monday, December 20, 2004

Zen and the Blues

Thought I'd better write again, before everyone assumes that I have jumped off Pier 39 with moss st cardigan in hand.

I was listening to Elwood's House of Blues radio hour on KFOG last night, and his special guest was this very cool lady named E.C. Scott. Kinda sounded like Etta James. She said singing the blues doesn't make you depressed, on the contrary, it makes you happy. That made me think about Aristotle's poetics and catharsis, and that made me think about how blogging when you're depressed is a lot like singing the blues -- you get it out there, out of your system, and other people read it and say, "Right on, sister, you're okay."

So, I'm feeling better. I have decided to take a very Zen approach to Blue Cardy. It will not be done in time for Christmas unless I grow two more sets of hands and knit 24/7. But that's okay. It will be done when it's done. In the meantime, CNITU is much too young to care which particular day of the year he's supposed to get his prezies.

I did get the Christmas cards sent, which was a fairly major accomplishment.

I also did something quite decadent and sinful -- I purchased some ridiculously expensive green and brown ribbon yarn to make wraps for the bridal party. It's really perfect yarn and I couldn't resist it.

Friday, December 10, 2004

A Rough Week. A Blue Day.

Sad news today - I just found out my dear Uncle David in England died yesterday of a massive heart attack. He's only in his sixties and he was playing badminton with my Aunt at the time. The family is in shock, it was just so sudden and unexpected. He kicked cancer a few years back, so this was not the way we expected him to go. I can't afford to fly there for the funeral, but my Dad's going.

It's just the worst thing in a week that has been out of whack in general - I've had a bad cold, had to perform in our touring show Tuesday when both an actor AND her understudy couldn't do it, and ended up with no voice at all on Wednesday. Did get some knitting done that day, but my heart hasn't been in it this week. Just slogging away on moss st, nearly done with the back of the lt blue side but dreading the rest of it. I'd love to finish by Xmas, but I don't know if it's going to happen.

Most of the rest of the Xmas shopping is done, though, and I got the decorations up, so it's nice and festive in our little apartment. The highlight of the week was watching Charlie Brown Christmas on TV. I think Linus is my hero. Of course, ironically, this lovely, wise little story about Christmas being too commercial was interrupted every five minutes by, guess what, commercials. *Sigh* as CB would say.