Knit One, Purr Too

So close, and yet so far

I was there in town, waiting for my husband to arrive so we could have dinner. I knew right where the yarn store was, and self-imposed rules on not buying any new yarn be damned - I was going to get myself something new and pretty; perhaps something pink. I was all set to browse blissfully through all the colors and the textures, but it was only after I had climbed the stairs and was staring at the door to the shop that I remembered the horrible truth. This particular yarn store is not open on Mondays! There would be no pretty new yarn for me. Sob!

I suppose it was for the best. This way I didn't have to break any promises to myself. But still. Sigh.

I'm more than halfway done with skein 5 on the second afghan. Only two more skeins to go, and then I will be done, done, done with Williamsburg blue in Lion Homespun yarn. On a whim I dug up poor unfinished Seabreeze this weekend and was startled at how light it felt in my hands. There's a big difference in weight between an afghan and the front of a sweater, in other words. But I left the piece out on the counter as a reminder of what I can work on next, once those final few skeins of Homespun are completed. Someday soon, I'll get back to it. And someday not so soon maybe I'll finally be able to get myself that pretty pink yarn I keep dreaming wistfully about. If I can manage to get to the yarn store when it's actually *open*.

Because one afghan just wasn't enough

Look! It's a boring afghan!

Okay, after almost 3 entire skeins, I'll admit it's starting to grow on me. Especially now that I was able to actually capture the diagonal stripes in a picture - they're not quite so easy to see in the real thing (thanks to the nubbiness of the yarn).

But oh boy am I getting really, really tired of blue. Sigh.

This weekend was the second annual Sisters Only weekend (no husbands, no kids, just us three sisters, lots of junk food, and two whole days of debauchery). We had a blast, and since last year we went to Reno and, among other things, did kareoke for the first time ever in our lives, this year we decided we needed to do something outrageous too (thus setting a precedent for every other Sisters Only weekend in our future).

We accomplished this by letting ourselves be attached to skinny little ropes and then we lowered ourselves 165 feet into a very big cavern and bashed our legs and knees on rocks and slid down a rope when there was nothing at all to hold on to except air and even though I think we were all equally terrified it was the most amazingly cool thing I have done in a very, very long time.

So there you are. What better way to bond with your siblings than to strap your overly generous asses into extremely tight caving equipment, and then lower yourself into the bowels of the earth with nothing between you and the floor (165 feet down) except grim determination and the little voice in your brain going 'holy shit holy shit holy shit' the entire way down? I mean, really. I'm not exactly sure how we're going to top this next year.

On the knitting front, I brought along three more skeins of the nubby blue Homespun in order to start the second afghan. And I certainly did get it started. I started it and ripped it out and started it and ripped it out and I think I did that four or five times the very first night. The problem was that the nubbiness of the yarn doesn't lend itself to anything as lacy as I was hoping, even with larger needles. So eventually I just gave up and decided to go diagonal stripes (k8, p8, then next row, move everything one stitch over, and so on) because at least it would be a pattern that would prevent it from curling on the ends.

It's not exactly the most exciting pattern in the world., but I am reminding myself that this is just an afghan, and that not everything I knit has to be exciting. I am also telling myself that when I am finished with this and Seabreeze I am going to go out and buy something in bright red or pink because I am getting so very, very sick of blue.

It's an.....afghan!

I am finally done with the first afghan. Let the cheering begin. I spread it out on the bed to take pictures and naturally, it was immediately populated by cats - the two very same cats who were *oh* so helpful as I was weaving in all the loose ends earlier.

That would be Sebastian in the front, and Allegra in the back. You can just see Azzie's nose peeking into the lower right corner. And yes, Allegra's the cat who 'posed' for the graphic for this journal, just in case you all were wondering.

I included a close-up of the pattern, just because it's kind of neat. Notice the artful inclusion of white cat hairs into the pattern? You can thank Sebastian for those too. Heh.

Now...on to the next project. I'm leaving on Friday for a weekend in a cabin by a lake with my sisters. So I might try to get a teeny bit done on Seabreeze, and then take a few skeins and get the second afghan started, just because it's the kind of thing I don't have to worry about getting dirty or mussed.