When I was a teenager I went to great lengths to hide my diary from my mother. Not my girlie Lizzie – she has started a blog of her own! Go and visit her — she is dying to see her stats go up. Now we can all find out what she really thinks about her Mom!

She and I already fight over who gets to use the laptop. It’s all downhill from here.

why I engage in a power struggle with a 13 year old over a laptop is beyond me – it is my laptop for crying out loud!

I have been working on a sock pattern from Knitting on the Road Sock Patterns for the Traveling Knitter. Although I am not traveling – in fact I have been firmly planted in the house while the guys are working on the bathroom! I ordered the yarn from Elann. It is a self striping sock yarn. This stuff is mesmerizing — as I knit it up, the stripes emerge (as if by magic!) and the math involved in making this happen boggles my mind! It is the David Blaine of fiber!

I am working the pattern called Friday Harbor. It is lovely. I had a bit of a rough start however. The first hurdle was to find size 2 dpns. The ones I did find are my grandmother’s old ones. The tips are more snub nosed than pointy and it makes working the pattern with such fine yarn challenging. Also the needles are so old that there are some rust marks on them and the yarn does not slide smoothly. buying new needles would be too easy – I must be a masochistic knitter! ;) . Furthermore, the chart for the pattern is misleading and in parts downright wrong. I only thought to look up errata on the Interweave Site after three false starts! ergh! (please read the ergh as growling noise) Is that something other knitters do before they begin, look up any mistakes? Am I so hopelessly naive? I have come a long way though — not too many years ago, it would never have entered my mind that the mistake was the pattern’s, I would have thought I was doing something wrong.

Anyway the socks are coming along nicely and so is the construction work – have I mentioned that I am in love with my contractor?? wink, wink

I have been working on a sock pattern from Knitting on the Road Sock Patterns for the Traveling Knitter. Although I am not traveling – in fact I have been firmly planted in the house while the guys are working on the bathroom! I ordered the yarn from Elann. It is a self striping sock yarn. This stuff is mesmerizing — as I knit it up, the stripes emerge (as if by magic!) and the math involved in making this happen boggles my mind! It is the David Blaine of fiber!

I am working the pattern called Friday Harbor. It is lovely. I had a bit of a rough start however. The first hurdle was to find size 2 dpns. The ones I did find are my grandmother’s old ones. The tips are more snub nosed than pointy and it makes working the pattern with such fine yarn challenging. Also the needles are so old that there are some rust marks on them and the yarn does not slide smoothly. buying new needles would be too easy – I must be a masochistic knitter! ;) . Furthermore, the chart for the pattern is misleading and in parts downright wrong. I only thought to look up errata on the Interweave Site after three false starts! ergh! (please read the ergh as growling noise) Is that something other knitters do before they begin, look up any mistakes? Am I so hopelessly naive? I have come a long way though — not too many years ago, it would never have entered my mind that the mistake was the pattern’s, I would have thought I was doing something wrong.

Anyway the socks are coming along nicely and so is the construction work – have I mentioned that I am in love with my contractor?? wink, wink

I have pictures to share today! The first is a picture of my den. This is the room that I just repainted. Over the weekend, we got the rugs hung! Just like the upcoming Oscar winners, I have a list of People Without Whom This Project Wouldn’t Have Been Possible(grammer alert! is that a double negative?). Many thanks to many people: MIL – for coming over and bossing helping me paint!. CS – for coming up with the carpet idea and color palette. Carmel – for the great advice re: carpet hanging (tackless strips! how simple!) and my Boar – a demon with the level & tape measure!

One of my favorite reads,Tequilla Mockingbird, recently posted a list of the contents of her car. It is very funny and you may want to check it out, that particular post is from February 16th. This, along with mass chaos, inspired me to go through my various knitting bags. It would have been far funnier to post an itemized accounting of everything I found within. And believe me I considered it. But at the time, my lack of organization (can you say anal rententive??) had me very cranky. It would have been so easy to use one of the nine pens/pencils to jot down on any of the five notepads what I found within those bags. Hell, I could have made a notation on the sanitary napkin I found using any one of the three lipsticks & glosses! I was quite certain however, that had I done anything other than snap a quick pic and get to work, that I would have rammed one of those pens into my eye. Such was my mood. I see that the picture I did snap was not enough – imagine, if you will, another pile of detritus – this one consisiting of magazines, stray needles, needle cases, fuzz, sand and unknowable particles. A picture paints a thousand words anyway, I give you five hundred ….. without further ado, here are two pics – one of the heap that was my knitting bags, the other the heap of crap I found within.