Happy birthday to me . . . yesterday.

Well, what's there to tell? It seems like at least a month has passed since I last updated, but it's really only been a week. A reeeeeallly loooong week. Some happenings since last post:

--Saw Kill Bill, parts 1 and 2. It's Tarantino. If you like him, you like him. If you don't, you don't. He's kinda like Tori Amos in that respect.
--Took La Femme Makita out for a bon-voyage dinner.
--Went shopping for niece birthday gifts. Is it sad that I can shop at Hot Topic for myself AND my 12-year-old niece now?
--Participated in the interview process to pick a new co-worker in my department. At last! Some day the workload will lift!
--Helped La Femme Makita pack up the truck for a move to Denver.
--Celebrated my birthday with a never-ending parade of food, including Hell's Kitchen Lemon-Ricotta pancakes. (how old? *cough*thirty*cough*)

And spent more time on work than I care to admit. However, I did manage to knit a bit over the weekend, to the tune of:

On the Needles: The Round About bag. Once I got it started, it didn't want to stop! I have one end done, rounded the purl corner turning, and have 10" or so of the main body of the bag knitted. Just tied in Kureyon skein #3.

Obligatory Cultural References
Reading: Still with the Murdoch. It's going to end BADLY, I just know it.
Listening to: The voices in my head sing the Kenya song. I know there are no tigers in Kenya, but I can't resist it.

Let's hear it for perseverance!

Circular cast-on after circular cast-on, I finally figured it out. It just took about five false starts. RoundAbout is ready to rock and roll. Wahoo!

That is all.

noo ne noo ne noo. . . .

. . . um, that was the little song that the animated typewriter from Sesame Street sings as he rolls around. If you're between 25 and 40, you know who I mean. Both Squid and I find ourselves defaulting to that little tune if we need to hum tunelessly.

I looked back over my archives today, and I realized a few things:
1. I need to start posting actual content at some point, here.
2. I need to fix my template so it's more to my liking. I love the nasty green/orange color scheme, it's just that these fonts are in "for the blind" sizes. I just need to motivate myself enough to go tweak the template.

This weekend was eventful, knitting-wise:
Finished: Just in time for warm weather, I now have a pair of knee-high Wool-Ease Cottage Socks. They're really neat, and will be cozy as all get-out when the weather turns cold again. However, for the time being, they go in the finished project bin with my mittens. My experiment to determine whether sock knitting is for me pays off!

On the Needles: I finished off my first skein of Lamb's Pride Bulky on the Skully sweater and joined in the second. Still a ways to go before I have to start paying attention to the pattern again, though. I started a pair of sock-yarn socks, but I'm finding it a little bit of rough going--managing four thin dpns at the beginning of a project is such a pain. The yarn is a really cool orange-green-pink print--like rainbow sherbet.

AND, because I am a project starting fool these days, I cast on the next red and white stripey sleeping cap. Ghoti or Iole, I think it's for you. . . .

I really want to get a felted bag on the needles: Round About is adorable, and done in Kureyon will be stripey indeed, but starting the stitches with a circular cast-on is proving difficult. With only 8 stitches on 4 dpns, I can't figure out where to start and which order to knit my stitches in. Much less work increases after only one round. Grrr. . . . I thought knitting was supposed to be relaxing.

Obligatory Cultural References
Reading: Sing it with me now, you know the words: The Sea, The Sea.
Listening to: Mclusky--do dallas. Such naughty words. Naughty.

Someone please tell me this week will end . . .

I'm currently attempting to survive the week from heck at work. Just as my main project is seriously gaining traction and requiring serious brain power, I'm looking at picking up several more. All, of course, in time for my birthday at the end of the month.

"So, Lemur, what would you like for your birthday?"
"A successful national rollout?"

Yeah. If only I could get paid real money for sitting around and knitting amateurly all day. In knitting news:

On the Needles: I have knitted my first heel flap! The instructions were odd, so the 10 stitches I'm making the flap out of cross-over the round, so it seems a little lopsided--I'm confident it will come out in the wash--er, the gusset--though.

Obligatory Cultural References
Reading: The Sea, The Sea. This might take me a while. I also hope to get to Big Brain tomorrow to pick up 1602 #8.
Listening to: "Rebel Rebel" by Shaun Cassidy. Yes, that "Rebel Rebel", yes, that Shaun Cassidy. It's all the fault of Ron "Boogiemonster" Gerber.

Insert Witty Title Here

Ugh. I'm pretty much completely exhausted tonight. A funeral, plus a late night at work, tends to take a lot out of a girl. However, in a dramatic renewal of perspective, I realized today that work isn't worth the angst I've been feeling about it lately. Important in that I'd like to do my best work, but not so important that I need to obsess over it with every fiber of my being like last week. It's so nice to get the perspective engine working again. Mine's due for a tune-up, as it tends to overheat, which leads to catastrophic failure.

Well, that's enough of oblique professional reference theatre for this evening.

On the Needles: The sock grows. And there's nothing like a nice long car ride for putting rows on a sweater. Must . . . resist . . . lure of new projects! (I don't need a Kureyon sweater. I don't, I don't, I don't.) I'll have cross stitch to do like mad soon--A Merry Cox Sailor's Huswif class is coming up with tons of prework to start in May. Up until January, I was a devoted cross-stitcher and embroiderer. Knitting has diluted my focus! Must . . . return . . . to counted thread . . . .

Obligatory Cultural References
Reading: The Sea, The Sea, Iris Murdoch, plus this week's Entertainment Weekly.
Listening to: The Magnetic Fields. Everyone really does need to own a copy of "69 Love Songs".

Thanks, Easter Bunny! (Bawk, Bawk!)

Well, in one of my most atypical Easters in years, the in-law family dinner was followed by a trip to the funeral home for the visitation and prayer service for one of Squid's uncles. I've never felt less Catholic and more Protestant in my life. I don't know which hand to cross myself with (your right, as it turns out), and I have no idea what I need to murmur in response when the priest pauses. Everyone else does. Alas. We'll attend the funeral tomorrow morning. Squid's uncle was a fireman for many a year, and as a result, we saw no fewer than four fire companies troop through the receiving line. It was impressive. He was a small-town legend.

Finished: The Coronet cap is complete! I need to block it, which should help the brim stay "turned up" at the right place, and it's a little wee bit long for my head, but I'm quite proud of it.
On the Needles: The Skully sweater's growing, and I'm going to try my hand at a sock. This free Cottage Sock pattern from Lion Brand is done in huge gauge, so it won't take me forever, and I should be able to see what I'm doing pretty clearly before I commit myself to teeny sock yarn.

Obligatory Cultural References
Reading: Finished The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste. Full speed ahead on the Murdoch. My bet is that our protagonist is completely off his rocker by the end of the book.
Listening to: Nothing at present.

And so to bed.

short bit tonight--there's a new Knitty!

Stupid bookmarks. Didn't update with the new Knitty issue and I had to find out about it from other weblogs. Sigh. Such a difficult life I lead. The new Knitty issue incuded the Knitter's Geek code--and since I'm both a knitter AND a geek, I couldn't resist. So, if you must know, my Knitting Geek code:

KCR Exp+ SPM+ Bam AddiT+ Den++ Syn Nov+ Wool++ Cot Stash(+) Scale(+) Fin(-)>+ Int Tex Felt Flat+ Circ++ DPN+ Swatch+ KIP+ Blog+ FO+ WIP++ GaugeW(B) AltX++Em+

And, of course, between the new patterns shown at Knitty and on Magknits, I'm dreaming happily of nothing but knitting.

On the Needles: Um . . . no news is good news? Putting rounds on Coronet, not much else.

Obligatory Cultural References
Reading: I'm up to Tuna Casserole in the Encyclopedia. Not far now. . . then it's nothing but Murdoch. Squid finished William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, and it's waiting there patiently for me. I also put Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver aside lo these many months ago (dang book's too heavy to travel with) in favor of lighter (weight-wise) books, and need to get going on it again. I love it, it's just too dang heavy.
Listening to: The voices in my head. Make them stop . . .

mmm. . . wha? Where am I?

Whoooo . . . long three days. Since the deal on tickets was too good to pass up, Squid and I took Friday off and attended the Looterati meet in Washington, DC. Yep. We traveled halfway across the country to meet people we've met on-line through a game where we all pretend to be pirates. In our defense (?), several of the folks in attendance are long-standing friends of ours, so we knew some of what we were getting ourselves into. As it stands, all of our fellow Looterati mates are really cool people, and we had a lovely time. Thanks to the red and white stripey hat I knit for Squid--who wore it to the party, since it's a trademark of his pirate character in-game--I have an order queue of two or three more. They're fun--I don't mind at all.

However, I had agreed to host my book club at the house today, which meant that we had to be back in town for me to be ready for book club at 3:00. Which meant an 8:00 a.m. flight out of Harrisburg. We left the party in DC at 11:30 or so last night, drove 90 minutes back to our friends' place where we were staying (Hi, Cranky and Smilie!), got in at 1:00 or so, experienced the daylight saving time change, and got up at the ungodly hour of 5:30 a.m. (post-time change, so really 4:30--3:30 to our poor little Central Time selves) to get to the airport in time. Okay, so I just took a paragraph to say "short night last night".

Once home, the frenzy of cleaning and food prep ensued. I'm now all cleaned up, and nearly ready to drop. I have a big meeting to prep for in the morning, so I'm thinking of just toddling off to bed, oh, about now.

However, there's tons of fun to report in the knitting part of the blog!

Finished: The kitty egg roll. Amon-Ra, Linus, and Dynamo looooove the egg roll. I finished 90% of it on the plane ride, and decided to finish it off as a hostess gift for Cranky and Smilie's cats. They loved it so much I made them a won-ton to boot.
On the Needles: Couple more inches done on the sweater, and I'm zipping along the outside of my Coronet hat.

Obligatory Cultural References
Reading: Making some progress through The Sea, The Sea. I have no idea where Ms. Murdoch's going to go with this, but I think I'm going to enjoy the ride. Still considering the narrator a bit of a blowhard. However, this is kind of like the pot calling the kettle black.
Listening to: Just the hum of the PC's fan.