Slippery Slope

It's happened:



I wore my legwarmers outside (and off my property) with a skirt and without boots. It's just a short jump from here to thinking pajamas are pants.

(I did take them off when I got to work, at least.)

Slow

I took the weekend off from writing, which was lovely. On Saturday, I rowed (an hour later than during the week--it was like sleeping in! Except that we were all an hour hungrier during the workout, which wasn't so great), ate breakfast with everyone at the boathouse, then met up with Jen and Jenn to go to the CT Sheep and Wool Festival.

I'd been thinking about buying a fleece (because a good response to having less time to knit is to make your fiber-y pursuits more time-intensive, right?), but I didn't. In addition to the time thing, I'm still not sure what I like and what I don't, fiber-wise, and I didn't want to commit to spending that much time with something that I might not like. Instead, I bought a skein of sock yarn from Ball and Skein and a couple of ounces of an alpaca/llama/silk blend called llamalicious from Mocha's Fiber Collection.

It was a perfect Rebecca day--rowing, knitting friends, fiber, and then Kevin and I thought briefly about biking when I got home, but in the end we just watched tv and ate dinner. And I finally finished up the roving I've been spinning (on my spindle) for something like 18 months! (It's plied and everything, although I used my wheel for that--otherwise it would have taken another 18 months!)

Isn't it pretty?



Sunday, I got up and knit and spun and napped and went to knitting and didn't even run (which meant I ran 10 miles today right after rowing... and now want to nap again when I should be writing... but not running yesterday was nice at the time!).

Speaking of writing... I'd better get going!

Argh

I finished some socks (at last... I think I may be knitting the amount "normal" knitters usually knit, and it feels like I've been knitting this same pair of socks for months). I was slightly late to work because I wanted to sew up the last toe, so I could take pictures during lunch.

What could be better than blue, brown and green socks with purple tights, photographed in a cafeteria on a rainy day? Also, I was going to take the pictures myself, since Kevin is at a conference. It would have been wonderful!

I very carefully packed the socks, plus the yarn I'm planning to start a shawl with (also wound this morning... possibly Kevin shouldn't go out of town, since I can't be trusted to get myself out the door on time. While we're on the subject, I also took a nap, made bread, and tried on most of my clothes in an effort to dress myself, all by 8 AM. Oh, and ran the dishwasher.) But then I left my phone/camera on the couch where I'd been sitting, so no pictures after all.

This is not the epic shawl project I keep blithering about, by the way--I'm going to wait till I'm back to my normal knitting time to start that. Instead, I'm going to make something Mara-ish, but I may make the ruffle/ribs rufflier. Also, I really like these modifications, so I think I'll make it wider. I'm going to use some Audrey yarn from Schaefer (a wool/silk blend, single ply), in a sage green color. I haven't kept anything I've made from Audrey so far, but blends like this can be pill-y (and being a single ply won't help), but I think it'll be fine in a shawl. And it's so soft and shimmery I can't resist.

Study Break

All this writing is reminding me of college and grad school... it wasn't that I worked all the time, but whenever I wasn't, I felt like I should be.

Back in the halcyon days (2 weeks ago) when I was reading blogs without a vague sense of guilt, I'd gotten into reading fashion blogs--mainly written by female profs and grad students, trying to express themselves while still being taken seriously as academics.

It's gotten me to try combining my own clothes in more interesting ways, to be braver about the colors I wear together. My idea of brave may not be your idea of brave though...

This, for example:



Dark and light brown with... yellow! (Previously, I think I'd only worn this dress with a dark brown sweater, or on its own. Living on the edge!)

However minor my color bravery may be, I'm happy to have thought of this--I really like my Citron, but I'd only worn it once because yellow isn't really in my palette. But now that I've tried it with brown, who knows what will happen!

(Speaking of brown, I finished my brown sweater! There's just the smallest chance that it will be cool enough to wear it tomorrow, when I'm helping out at university crew race. Standing around next to the river at dawn--actually 7:30 AM, which is almost mid-afternoon for rowers--in April has got to be cool enough for wool, right?)

Archiknist Can't Come to the Blog Right Now

Because she's typing frantically. But she did make me, so that's something. (Why she suddenly wanted to make a sock puppet, I do not know. I'm only a week old, so there are lots of things I don't know yet.)

But she wanted to tell you that you're welcome for the nice weather this weekend (at least in the northeast--she's not sure how far her powers reach), because she's working on that cozy wool sweater again: she joined the body and sleeves, knit the yoke, cut the steek, and is now working on the collar. It might seem like someone who has time for all that knitting also has time to blog, but she knit while reading about building requirements for archives and watching a DVD about cold storage of film-based materials. Doesn't that sound fun?

Young and naive as I am, I'm not sure I buy this "too busy working to blog" thing. Archiknist did manage to bike, row (twice!), run, and visit Northampton this weekend (also New York City, but that was for work, she claims). Possibly she's just lazy about working on the computer?