Viva el fin de semana larga!

I love days off, even when that means more work to come back to after the long weekend. I spent most of the past two days either shopping (real-life mall crawling or the online variety) or vegetating. In my defense, I spent one whole hour dutifully fixing the internet exploder problem I was having, so all is well with browsing - for now.

On Friday after work, I went to Rockville to checkout a LYS and ended up with some Koigu and Berroco HipHop. On Saturday, I got some delayed gratification from a Herrschner's shopping binge, thanks to the US Postal Service. Of all the other goodies, I'm really excited about this:

It's Berroco Suede for a purse. Unfortunately, I can't justify casting on for it right now. I have way too many other UFO's, that I must must must finish something before starting anything new. On the bright side, this is close to finished:

And there's been some movement on the forgotten afghan front. I did eight rows, which may not sound like much, until you consider that there are 129 st per row (and that I'm bored with the pattern and can't wait to finish).

Sunday was spent walking around (and around) Arundel Mills and the surrounding stores. I got a cheap little camera, my first camera since grade school. I am not a shutterbug, as my crappy pictures can attest, but I think there is something funky with the viewfinder on this Kodak C300. Basically, what you see through the viewfinder is not at all what you capture in the picture. I have to use the live LCD viewfinder (read: battery hog) to get the pictures I want (i.e. no chopped-off heads). Oh well, I guess you get what you pay for. I'm not sure if I'll return it or just live with it.

Today, I joined my first ever knit-a-long, Knit the Classics. Books and yarn? I can't wait!

Happy Thursday...

I got some goodies in the mail today. Here are some nice pinkish Cascade skeins to try my hand at felting:

I want to try this felted bag. I also received the auction lot of needles I snagged from ebay a few days ago, and which will go to the knitting-as-therapy group at work.

On a completely unrelated topic, this is my first post using the firefox browser I just installed. IE is behaving strangely on this new OS install, but only when I try to access blogger (...hmmm...*head scratching*...) I really like the google integration in firefox (not that the google toolbar is soooo hard to add to IE....) and the interface is clean and simple. I really like IE, but it's probably the posterchild for bloatware.

It's alive!

I finally got my computer fixed! Well, mostly fixed - just a few more tedious hours of reinstalling applications. It crashed horribly almost two weeks ago for no reason I could think of. I turned it on and got a nasty surprise. I couldn't access the c partition at all. Repairing with the Windows install CD didn't work, but it did give me some information to go on. Bad news: couldn't read the C, H, or I partitions. Good news: I could see the other partitions. Of course, all the important stuff was on the lost partitions, but anyhoo...Well, I didn't cry, though I really wanted to. At any rate, it's working now, after a whole lot of googling and cursing and fiddling with different file recovery packages (I was pretty desperate to rescue some of my data before reformatting so I ponied up the dough for it - serves me right for not backing up regularly). Now, I can only hope this was an isolated incident. It would really suck if I spent all that time putting the partition table back in order only to find out that my hard drive's bad and should just be replaced.

As for less frustrating thoughts, I was eating these at work today:

when I remembered the 5 balls of cheery yellow Bernat Coordinates I had stashed away. How about a "baked and not fried Goldfish" blanket?

Star Wars!!!

Guess what all these people were waiting for?

No, not hot donuts time at the Krispy Kreme. Yup, that was the line at the Uptown theater for tonight's 6:30 showing of Revenge of the Sith. Actually, that's about the first third of the line (good thing we were early). The rest of the line went down the block and disappeared around the corner. And I thought it wouldn't be crowded, what with it being a week night. Plus all the truly Star Wars-obsessed would definately have seen it (probably 5 times) by now. Regardless of the crowds, the waiting and the ticket price (I'm more a half-price matinee kinda girl), it was totally worth it! I was ready to be disappointed after the somewhat lackluster first two episodes, but no need to worry: Episode III is very much on par with the original trilogy. Speaking of which, I have to dig that up from my dvd pile. Gonna check for plot holes... can you say "loser geek?"

Intro

I'm a secretary. I sing in a choir, something I've done since high school. I'm a mediocre alto in a really good group. Yes, I really am a low voice; I'm not secretly a soprano trying to avoid high notes. We do mostly big choral works, like masses and requiems. Our concert next month will feature the Bach Magnificat and the Mozart Requiem. It's gonna be awesome. Also, on an odd whim, I took up the violin a few years ago. Pongo is my instrument, not my dog, though with the way I play, sometimes they sound the same.

Oh, yes, and I knit! I've got a bunch of things on the needles right now. There's one humongous afghan that I always find an excuse to avoid finishing. I'm on ball 6 of 7 and progressing very slowly. Here's a close-up of the front (apologies for the crappy cameraphone pix):


and the back:

It's a sort of faux cable pattern. There are a couple of tricky parts (Row 3 bites! I always get confused!) but the hardest thing about it is the size! It's 129 stitches wide, so each row seems endless. I do still work a row or two now and then, to assuage my guilt.

The others WIPs are scarves. One is the ubiquitous Scarf Style ruffles. This one is done in Lion Brand Microspun with some mystery ladder yarn carried along.

I really like this pattern. It's pretty, easy to memorize and simple to do. I finished one recently using some Karabella Aurora 8 (thanks to a LYS's recommendation), Cervinia Genova, and Bernat Matrix. The other scarves are from Stich 'n Bitch Nation. The Wavy scarf looked interesting but I don't care for the results I'm getting. Maybe it's me, or better yet, I'll just blame the yarn. Hmmm, time to rip? The third scarf is the drop stitch (Yo Drop It). I've done this one before (with the same yarn too), so it's coming along ok.

My latest FO is a birthday present for my brother, and as such has to stay under wraps until the big day, which, unfortunately, is in October. For now, I have to hide it. So there is a downside to finishing early! Here are some other recent FO's:


a couple of mohair scarves (Knitty's Loopy and Luscious pattern). The orange and red uses Rowan kidsilk haze and Gedifra ashtrakan. The rainbow one is from a little ball of Kidhallow Farm mohair I got at the MD Sheep and Wool Festival. The contrasting yarn is Lion Fun Fur Prints. It's not a thick-and-thin but the color was so right, I just had to use it.

I also made a pretty flower for my dearest smother:

The flower is Lion Chenille and the leaves are leftover Aurora 8 from the ruffle scarf. Woohoo, creative use of scrap yarn!

I'm trying to get up the courage to try a more complicated project, like a sweater. I've been thinking about either the free Rebecca patterns, like the eyelet or ribbed sweaters. Well, if that isn't an excuse to go shopping, I don't know what is!

Hello Cruel World!

So this is what the other side of a blog looks like. I'll be posting on all sorts of topics, like work (with names changed to protect the innocent, of course) and extracurricular stuff too. There's music - here's my Pongo:

I also knit and will gladly share purdy pitchurs, if I can find a decent (and cheap!) camera. There's also my doggie:

He's dumb as a brick but absolutely adorable - it's all in the (in)breeding, I'm sure. Or maybe I'll talk about the two office plants I'm trying not to kill... who knows? Essentially, if it strikes my fancy, there's a fair chance I'll bring it up here.