Blankie Friday - urp!

Shoot. I was all set to come here bragging about how not only is Blankie Friday happening on Friday night, or perhaps the very early hours of Saturday morning by the time I actually hit Publish, but more importantly about how very much work I got done on the blanket this week. Then I had to go and count the squares I finished this week, and the number is pretty sad. Only fourteen squares this week. But it was my birthday week, and the whole family was sick. Shit. At this rate, the thing is not going to be done by the State Fair. Not the end of the world, I know, and I will keep plugging away at it and maybe I will surprise myself.

Now for some good news. One reason why there were fewer squares knit this week is because I decided it was time to knit some more of the edging. I can really only work the edging on the right hand side as you're looking at it face on, because that's where I left off before and I want it to go in one continuous stream around to the starting corner, where I will graft it together at the end. Still, I was tired of all those strings - both yarn ends and provisional cast-on ends - hanging there, and I wanted something a little different to keep me interested. It took a full evening's worth of work, plus a bit, partly because getting those live stitches back on even a size zero needle was a bit of a bitch. But I did it and now I am happy. Now I'm really going to have to have an end-weaving session this week, I imagine.

Other happy blankie news is that I am only three squares away from having used all of the yarn bits at least once. I'm only counting the yarn bits that are eligible - the cotton blends, the Koigus, the solid-colors, and the ones that were not fingering or other blends besides wool/nylon do not count. Still, this means that I can allow myself to start re-using bits of yarn, and that means I can start gleefully picking my favorite colors out of the lot and knitting them with abandon. I'm pretty sure I'm more than halfway done with the blankie, barely, so I'll have to decide whether I must reuse every ball a second time before using any a third. I have a feeling the anal-retentive side of me will insist on that. And, of course, if I get any more scraps in the mail, they will be used before any others.

Here's the current picture.



Also in knitting news, but not my knitting news, on Wednesday I saw my friend Meleah at knitting group. She just finished knitting a pair of socks using a pattern that I wrote a couple of years ago. It was originally published in Dawn Brocco's now-defunct Heels and Toes Gazette, and I sell it in pamphlet form through a few local yarn shops now. It's a lacy pattern knit with Cascade Fixation, and I liked it quite a bit when I knit it up way back when. This was my first time seeing someone else knit this pattern up in person, and it was fun in a kind of surreal way. I really like Meleah's color choices.



Here's a picture of my original ones:



So anyway, part of the reason this post is so late tonight - well, my posts are late most nights, I know, but tonight Joe and I were out to dinner BY OURSELVES! Joe's company has a party every year in January instead of trying to do it during the stressful holiday season. Last year we didn't go because I was super-pregnant and we didn't want to deal with finding a babysitter for Julie - I think we've had babysitters maybe four times since Julie was born, and they've always been either Joe's parents or a very close family friend. Tonight, I arranged for one of Julie's pre-school teachers to come over, and Julie was elated to see her at the door. Everything went off without a hitch, and perhaps we will get another night or two out this year if our budget can swing it. Between paying the babysitter and paying for an actual activity out of the house, it's not something we'll be able to do even once a month! But it was good time tonight. I even got to eat chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream again. Wahoo!

Upcoming topics: The yarn that showed up in the mail today (oh my!), the yarn I expect to show up in the mail next week (whoo wee!), a conclusion to the contests, the objects that I finished in the car today while the girls were napping, and that damned blue stripey sweater and what the hell am I going to do about it.