Saturday, May 26, 2007

Finished!

I finished the Ballet T the other night. No pics yet, but I'll try and get some up this weekend. It's all rainy and cloudy, so the light's not great for photo taking...

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Must keep knitting!

The baby must have been going through one heck of a growth spurt last week, because I was back to napping every afternoon. Not much knitting gets done when I'm zonked out for two hours. I knit a few rows on the Ballet T last night, though, and I think I've got nine rows left. I'm hoping I can finish it up this week. I really want to get cracking on the Mommy Snug now!

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

100 Books

I stole this from I Need Another Skein (sendyarn.blogspot.com)

Look at the list of (100) books below.
Bold the ones you’ve read.
Italicize the ones you own.

Movies don’t count.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25 . Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie(Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible (Only parts)
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She's Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

I hit 60, provided I can accurately count numbers... What's funny is that I've heard of most of the books I haven't read and actively avoided reading them. The ones I haven't heard of, I may just track down and take a look.

Monday, May 07, 2007

Pics, progress, news!

First, a big apology to my secret pal -- It's taken forever for me to get these pictures up, but you'll see I've been busy.

Here's the wonderful package that was waiting for me after our trip to Florida. The outside was sealed with the cutest tape -- it had red, winged balls of yarn printed on it. Inside was this adorable sheep postcard and three skeins of Candy Apple Cotton Fleece. It's super soft, and lots of fun to knit.


This picture is closer to the actual color of the yarn, and shows just why I know the yarn is fun to knit. I've been busy with it. This is the Ballet Tee from Loop D Loop. It's my first adult-size garment, and it's been going really well. It's knit on US 15 needles, and goes fast.

I worked on it all weekend, while I watched movies on TV. My husband had to work, so I was left home alone with the new cable and my yarn. No complaints here! I've been exhausted, so it was nice to have a few days to be lazy and relax. Since I was knitting, I still felt productive.

I watched The Hunt for Red October on Saturday and Spiderman 2 on Sunday - and knit the whole time. I'm about half done with it. I'm making the larger of the two sizes, and hoping I didn't make a mistake in that.

The smaller size is for people who wear a US 2-8 dress size, and the larger size for those who wear a 10-14. I typically wear an 8, but I didn't really like the idea of wearing something that's on the top end of a small size.

I'm also ready to share some news -- I found out a few months ago that I'm pregnant! Hence the utter exhaustion. And, another reason I'm erring on the large size for the Ballet Tee. It's just starting to get warm out, and I'll have a bit of a baby bump by the time I can really start wearing it. I figured a bit of extra room couldn't hurt.

The pregnancy's also the reason I needed the 19 skeins of the Classic Elite. I'm going to try making the Mommy Snug in time to actually wear it when I'm gigantic this fall. Here's the sweater...



And here's my swatch. My gauge is a bit big, so I have some math to do before I actually start knitting. I think if I knit the smallest size, it'll still fit about right, given that I'm getting bigger stitches.


And just to show that I wasn't the laziest being in my house this weekend, I give you Cairo, the wonder cat. I came home from brunch on Sunday to find this:


Sorry about the wonky color. It's really hard to photograph a black cat who's hiding under the covers. Isn't she silly?