Polgara Knits

I had two readers yesterday–two!  Woot!  And, uh oh, one of them clicked on the link to my main website.  Ouch.  That sucker hasn’t been updated in forever!  I’m terribly sorry, mystery reader!  I’ll go post a picture or something right away!

I haven’t done anything yarn-y this week, I’m afraid.  Ever since finishing the shell shawl (picture still to come), I haven’t been inspired to start anything new.  Well, that’s not entirely true–there’s one project I’ve been thinking of, as a present for a friend, but first I have to obtain some Cascade 220 in the desired colors.  I’ve been carrying around a couple of balls of nubbly red yarn and some needles, in case I feel like starting a scarf for the Red Scarf Project, but after three days, the needles are still bare and the yarn is still balled.  Also, my evenings have been spent visiting my friends’ daughter at the hospital, where I stand by her bed and sing to her while she sleeps, so when I get home, my back and neck are cranky from the odd standing position, and my head just doesn’t want to think. Just too tired, I guess.  So, no knitting or crochet news this week.

Instead, I’ve been busy at work, integrating two exhibitions at once (not the first time).  When I take a break, I play with Twitter, or I find new widgets to futz with. (Didja see the new iTunes widget in the sidebar?  Scroll down, it’s neat!) I’ve signed up with Scrabbulous, but have yet to actually play a game–everyone there seems way more advanced than I, it’s very intimidating! And sometimes, I search the internets far and wide for the cheapest Brown Sheep Burley Spun in variegated colors (one hank is the perfect size for a bubble bag!).

Last night, I helped my friend Allyson Beatrice assemble gift bags.  She will be doing a reading from her first book, Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby?, and a Q&A this weekend (Saturday, 9/1, 4pm) at Vroman’s in Pasadena.  (You should come!  There will be the aforementioned goody bags, and cake! And, she’s way funnier than me, so it’ll be entertaining, too!)

That has been my week so far. Not exciting, I know (although the near-death of my not-backed-up external harddrive was certainly a pulse-raiser!), but I hate to see this blog go without frequent updates. Perhaps for my next post, I’ll describe my awesome new business cards!

And now, for something completely different–my darlin’, Trouble:

As part of my birthday celebration yesterday, I spent part of my day at Barnes & Noble, because it’s one of my favoritest places ever.  While there, I purchased many Fall knitting magazines, which, I have to say, have gotten quite expensive.  Seriously, $35 for five magazines?  (Maybe six, I don’t remember exactly.)  So far I’ve only gone through one of them, but that’s because the new Vogue Knitting is enormous–silver anniversary edition, guaranteed to give you a sore shoulder as you cart it around The Grove in your shoulder bag. I don’t know why I continue to buy VK, as I so very rarely ever make anything from it.  Perhaps it’s the pretty (yet dark–?!) pictures, or the articles (it does have good articles).  But the patterns are usually way too complicated/big/time-consuming/just.not.me to justify the cost when you consider $35 for five-six magazines.

Still, pictures of pretty yarns and stitches and textures will get me every time. And it’s so glossy! (Translation: shiny!)

Soon, my awesome friend Kristen will be dropping off the remainder of my birthday cake (I had too many other things to carry last night) and a caramel latte from Coffee Bean, and then I shall chill out in my favorite chair, eating cake, drinking caffeine, and reading the rest of my new magazines–the ones with patterns that actually inspire me.

Today’s my birthday, and I tried to do a little early celebrating by splurging at Yarns Unlimited yesterday before my PT appointment.  I got there at 11:15am, which should’ve been perfect, since the store opened at 11am, except…it didn’t.  I got there, and the doors were locked, the security gate was pulled, and all the lights were out.  It was very sad-making, let me tell you.  I’m in a self-imposed yarn embargo, so deciding to buy yarn I didn’t need was a Big Deal, and then it was gone, like smoke.  Phooey.  I’d really wanted that bulky wool, too.

I did, however, finished the shell shawl last night.  Woot!  I have no pictures yet, but soon, I promise.  In the meantime, I’m going to go celebrate my birthday a bit more before dinner with a glass of Irish Mist–mmmm, yummy!

I got started on my latest project this week–the shell shawl from Debbie Stoller’s The Happy Hooker.  (The picture is from early Sunday–I spent most of yesterday on it, so it’s grown quite a bit already.)  It was a little hard to get started–shells and treble stitches are new to me–but once I got into the swing of it, it became easy-peasy (except for the blisters forming on my fingers).  I can even work on it while watching dvds, without losing count.  Woot!  I’m using purple Red Heart, which was a Christmas gift from my friend Tricia last year.  I thought it’d be enough, but as it turns out, I was wrong–looks like I’ll need at least another skein.  I’ve long since thrown the wrapper away, so hopefully dye lot won’t be an issue.

I really like the pattern,  particularly how each row gets quicker, since you’re going top down and therefore decreasing a shell on each pass.  I suspect I’ll be making this shawl again, perhaps with the blue discontinued alpaca from Cascade that I’ve been saving for a special occasion; we’ll see how this one turns out first, though.

Yesterday I was catching up on my blog reading, surfing Wordpress blogs by tags, and I found a reference to “KnitWars.”  Huh, I thought, I wonder what that is?  There was no link, so I googled it and found Lime n Violet’s website, and what I read of KnitWars intrigued me muchly!

They had found a website called ChoreWars, whose sole purpose is to turn chores into a game resembling a D&D adventure.  Sweet!  Groups of people (families, housemates, offices, etc.) create their own gaming party and define their own adventures (i.e. chores), with rewards, treasures and risks attached to each one.  Presumably these families set up a real-life reward/punishment system based on the scores people earn as motivations for the completion of chores and duties.

Lime and Violet created their own chore party, but instead of mopping, dusting and vacuuming, the adventures run more along the lines of finishing a WIP, frogging a lost cause, and spinning 4 oz. of fiber.  You create your own character and keep track of your accomplishments to earn points, gold and treasure–meaningless in the general scheme of things, since this wasn’t set up to compete against other knitters, but a fun way to keep track of what you’ve done, what you’re doing, and what each goal might be worth on the scale of your own time.  It’s fun and creative and fantasy-adventurish, and may not be for everyone, but for me, competitive and fantasy-loving me, IT’S AWESOME!  So far I love it to pieces, and I’m hoping it motivates me to finish the many WIPs I have stashed away in drawers and closets.

In fact, I love it so much that I created my own private party of one, with all my single-living, nobody to do them but me, chores and activities (including exercise and good eating habits), in the hopes I can kick myself into gear to get those dishes done, and finally throw that old computer away, and earn points and rewards while I’m at it!  (There’s a 5% chance I can buy myself a new dvd if I brush the kitties tonight!)

Yes, I am a goober, but I *heart* technology, especially the kind that makes the tedious necessities of life a little more interesting.

And since I want this post to count towards points in the KnitWars, I have to include a picture:

This is a purse that I knit months and months ago, that has been sitting on a shelf ever since, waiting to be felted. I live in an apartment building, with coin-operated washing machines downstairs. The water doesn’t get very hot, and at $1.00 per wash, it can take a lot of valuable quarters to felt things in it. And this isn’t the only purse waiting to be felted. Someday, they’ll be FO’s, and on that day, I’ll be sure to take the KnitWars points for them!

What makes a knitting blog interesting?  Is it all the yarn/needlework chatter, or the little extras that differentiate each blogger as individuals?  There’s only so much I can talk about my current projects, but I feel guilty for neglecting my blog for almost a week with no updates.  Perhaps a mix of both would work best?

Well, on the knitting front at least, my Booga Bag is nearly finished–the knitting part, anyway.  The colors are a bit more spring-like than late summer, but since I usually just put my bags on a shelf when I’m done with them, I guess it doesn’t matter all that much. I started the last color change last night, and as there isn’t much of that color left (or of the other two, for that matter), I’ll have to bind off very soon.  I just can’t decide if I want a normal bind-off, or the i-cord bind off from the Little Coco bag.  Hmm.  I’ll also need enough left over for the i-cord handles.  Oops.  Maybe if I mix the leftovers of all three, I’ll have enough?  Yeah, in retrospect, that was bad planning on my part.

I have done nothing in crochet since my last update; the bag has had all my attention this week.  I even took it to the Red Sox/Angels game on Tuesday, although to be honest, I never took it out of my bag–afraid I’d miss something, I guess.   It was also bloody hot until the sun went down.  But I did work on it at my doctor’s appointment on Wednesday and at the hair stylist’s yesterday, while I waited for the bleach, and then the blue dye, to set in.  (New blue! Squee!  Except, it’s more of a purple blue right now, but it’ll fade and then I can make it my usual blue–new blue! Yay!)  I did not work on it while I had lunch with my friend K, or at either of my two sushi lunches (I’m obsessed with sushi these days, can’t get enough of it), or at my phsyical therapy appointment, but I did work on it while watching my Netflix dvds–The Dresden Files, disc one, and Eureka, disc one.

Ha!  Didja see what I did there? I shared my week while still making it knitting related!  Yes, I am a goober.

Let’s see, what else?  I’m terribly behind in reading my favorite knitting blogs.  I haven’t bought any new knitting or crochet books or magazines this week.  Oo!  I have been considering changing my stance on socks.  I have always been anti-sock, because I despise DPNs with the heartfelt blackness of deep space.  But!  Two weeks ago, Wendy of Wendy Knits talked about knitting socks with two circulars, and she included a link to a video demonstrating the technique.  (I’ve always known that awesome video site exists, but I always forget about it when it’s time to research a technique.)  The video made it look not-impossible, and possibly even do-able.  I’m not saying I’m gonna be starting a sock this week or anything, but I’m turning it over in my head, and I’m no longer saying never.

Jack wants attention RIGHT NOW, so that’s it for today. 

And what exactly is the definition of the word intrinsic?  According to dictionary.com, it means “belonging to a thing by its very nature.”  Does that mean anything to you?  ‘Cause it doesn’t mean a darned thing to me.  No matter, I still like saying it–intrinsic!

And I’m done.  Can you tell I’m bored to pieces?  I know boredom is a sign of, well, a very bad thing, I’m sure, but I find myself mired in indecision and an absence of motivation.  My downfall, you see, is my clean apartment.  When my apartment needs to be cleaned, I can find a gazillion things to do that must be done before actually cleaning; but today, I had a guest visit for some tutoring in Javascript, which of course meant lots of emergency-cannot-procrastinate cleaning.  Now here I sit, in my beautifully clean apartment, and I don’t know what to do with myself.

Knit, you say?  Crochet?  You mean pick up yarn in this admittedly not *so* sweltering heat?  You’re right, I should.  I have a booga bag that’s only half finished, and the scrap blanket that’ll probably never be finished, and I still only have one completed square for that Larger than Life bag.  I fear the yarn today, though; I know that once I pick it up, I’ll be planted in this chair for the rest of the day.  As long as I resist, there’s always the possibility, albeit a slim one, that I’ll stand up and go do something.  I don’t know what that something is, but I’m sure it’ll come to me, as long as I don’t tie myself down with yarn. (But not literally.) (This time.)

So far I’ve eaten some nuts….and put my feet in the pool….and helped my elderly neighbors with a wanna-wander cat…and eaten some cheese…and updated my Amazon wishlist (by request from my sis, as my birthday is coming up).  Um, yeah.  That’s about it.  Pathetic, isn’t it?

But on the bright side, I’ve updated my blog, so that my two readers will have something new to read, instead of wondering why I haven’t updated in a week.