A woman of leisure... almost

Hi Knitters!

I've been in a weird blog silence, waiting for news at work. And it came Thursday - I've been laid off! Although it's rotten to be given the boot, I am actually quite ready to move on and glad to be given the chance to leave with a "lovely parting gift" of a severance package instead of walking away on my own. I'm still working mornings, but I've started taking my afternoons off, and on December 21, I hand over my computer and will be done working for a while. My severance will last a good way into 2008, so I'm looking forward to that thing you never get in your adult life: time off!

While I am a woman of leisure (sort of), I am determined to get more exercise and embark on some volunteer projects (databases! why does it always have to be databases??) at church and possibly for the SF Shakespeare Festival. Yesterday I went walkies with Emy on the Los Gatos creek trail, which was GREAT. My legs are really tired today, so I must have done something right. I'm looking for a yoga class next.


I'm actually a little concerned that I might have LESS knitting time due to the layoff -- meetings were awfully handy for knitting! But I'm plugging away. I finished the actual knitting for the EZ Knitters Almanac baby sweater for my newly arrived niece. Alison Claire was born in Orlando on Thanksgiving day and I'm ashamed to say I only started knitting for her a week before she was born. I've got a few ends to weave in and underarm seams to sew and this puppy can be shipped! It's sized for about a 6 month old baby - might even still fit her next winter, if she is as petite as her sister - so I am also hunting for the yarn to finish a newborn wrap-front top from the Blue Sky Royal Baby set. I *know* there were two ball of this Melange alpaca - I *just* photographed them for Ravelry. Only now one of them is missing. If only someone with some leisure time would come organize my stash... oh, wait. Drat.

The only other knitting actually in progress is my Klaralund, and this is a Ravelry success story - I traded & bought 3 skeins of Noro Silk Garden from two other Ravelry members to make up for bad info in the original pattern. (550 g of yarn for the largest size vs 700 for the largest size in the errata!) Now I am eagerly knitting away, hoping to have a new sweater to wear in Illinois at Xmas time.

I spent Sunday evening winding up little balls of Silk Garden & labeling them with their sequence in the stripe pattern, so I will have an easier time finding the next ball to work with each time I run out. This particular color - #84 - has 16 different stripes in each repeat. I don't know if all Silk Garden has that many colors - I would have naively said there were maybe 8 colors - so I was surprised to find 16. My little balls of yarn now have labels like "11-15, bright red to dark brown" or "1 - 6, fuchsia to deep purple" I'm using my first sleeve as the key to the stripe sequence and trying to only join yarn in the proper place in the sequence. Anal much?

And finally - a spinning report. Last Saturday's spin-in was a small but hearty gathering. We celebrated Cindy's first plied yarn with some nice champagne and enjoyed meeting Margit's dog posse. (Three dogs makes a posse, right?) I plied some alpaca in the Fiber Fiend "flame" colorway, which I bought from Margit at the last spin-in (photos later - I'm at an awkward stage with my photo processing due to upgrades & ignorance.) And, big surprise, Margit had all her dyed roving ready for us to peruse and I fell victim to some blue / grey / light blue merino roving which ought to be good for husband socks.

Tomorrow night is knitting meetup in Saratoga - we talked about maybe going for fondue after knitting which would be very cool if it works out. Leave a comment here or make a note on your meetup RSVP if you can do fondue starting at 10 pm Wednesday.

Happy knitting!