Blocking

Today, I blocked the Roam shawl. Here it is before, just laid on the mats.

Swish, swish.

Get the water out.

And pinned! It grew nicely.

It’s still damp, so I shut it in my office, where it can spend a peaceful night under the ceiling fan. Can’t wait to try it on!

On and Off the Needles

I've been knitting!

Back in November, I started a shawl, and threw up a teaser photo, but then I don't think I ever followed up on that (2021, aka The Year of Not Following Up On That). So here we are now!

The pattern is Roam, by Dawn Barker (Ravelry), and it is part of her group of assigned pooling patterns: you take a yarn that is dyed in one color for three quarters of the skein, and in a contrasting color or multiple colors for the rest, and then you knit plain on the main color and do the patterny bit when you get to that second part.

The yarn I used is from Yarn Snob (Ravelry link), 100% Merino wool, and the colorway is Times Square: the main color is a deep, almost blue, purple, and the contrast is multi-colored and highlighter bright. I love it!

The pattern starts at a point and widens. A decent-sized shawl could be made with two skeins, but this yarn was sold in a three-pack, which meant I could make mine as large as I want without worrying about running out. 

Every once in a while, I put it on a longer needle so I could stretch it out, and each time until last week, I've kept on going. This time, though, I decided it was big enough that I could move on to the edge/border, which is in linen stitch. 

(The end of the second skein came several rows into the linen stitch.)

I love how the yarn is showing in the linen stitch! I bound it off last night, and am eager to see how blocking smooths it out.

Now, as the end of this drew near, and also as my trip draws near, I wanted to be sure to have a good social knitting project ready to go. I liked the look of the Wheelwright Shawl, a free pattern from Purl Soho. It's a simple, circle-plus shawl design using short rows to make wedges, and it uses DK yarn, which I happened to have enough of already in my stash (Three Irish Girls Springvale DK, in the colorway Pride in the Name of Love). I had been planning to make a little blanket with it, but that hadn't happened, and hey, here we go!

Funnily enough, I wound a skein of it at the same time as I was winding the third skein of the Yarn Snob, and my, don't they have a lot in common?

Anyway, I cast on and knit one wedge, just to be sure it would work as social knitting, and the answer was yes! I lightly wet it and pinned it out to photograph, since it wanted to roll a bit.

I like what the colors are doing, and though I enjoyed the assigned pooling project, it's also kind of nice to just knit! (And purl, but you know what I mean.)

So that's ready. I pushed myself to finish the Roam, mostly because I want to wear it on the trip. I'll also bring a sock project with me, and though I have one in progress, it isn't really grabbing me for some reason. Nothing wrong with, it just... isn't grabbing me. I might cast on another one (in fact I may have done some stash-diving already; I might have pulled out the swift; some casting on may have happened). Because there are no knitting police and I can do what I want (in this, if in no other aspect of life).

It's Been More Than Two Years

I'm going on a small trip in a couple of weeks, and I'm both excited and a little nervous! I don't think I've spent a night away from home since my trip to Hawaii, two years ago last month. Have I? No, pretty sure not. So, two weird, weird years and now I get to try to remember how to pack.

I'm leaving two weeks from Sunday, and will only be gone for three days, no flying, so it's not really as major an expedition as it feels like. I'm just so rusty! I love the anticipation of a trip, always have, but there are definite nerves this time, and I keep reminding myself that there is very little I could forget that will ruin the whole trip. 

I even started a new knitting project to be sure it would make good social knitting (I need to catch you up on recent knitting, I'll do that soon). What could be more important than that? Well, clothes count too. And, you know, stuff.

I wonder when's the last time I went two years between trips? 

Help Me Out Here

I have a couple of topics I want to write about soon, updating on my knitting and talking about an upcoming trip, but first off, I could use some advice. It's annual review time at work, ugh, and I am just stumped by this question:

"What did not work as well as planned?"

Other than "I did not win the lottery in 2021," I have no answer to that; I kind of want to write, "Did 2021 work as planned for anyone?" or just "I mean, 2021, am I right?" 

More seriously, my only personal job 'plan' involves doing the work that I am given as well as possible in a reasonable amount of time. I do that. We have no control about what comes in when, so it's hard to be any more concrete than that.

Last year, I went with the angle of "we hoped to be ahead of the curve regarding the busy period at the end of the year, but given 2020, not surprisingly that didn't work" (I'm paraphrasing). And while 2021 was also a weird year, I'm not sure I can hit that again.

What angle am I missing? 

Which Are You In?

Ah, XKCD, that's it.

I have nothing against the game or those who play it. But I'm in the control group.

Oranges to Juice: A Photo Essay

During orange season, which runs roughly November to March or April, we go to the grove and buy whatever varieties they have (it changes all the time).

You start with this:

Cut them:

Look at this one, so pretty in the middle:

Next, squeeze them, which brings us to this: 

And voila, delicious juice!

So good, you won't believe it's good for you.

Brrr

We aren't getting the foot or two of snow that's hitting the northeast this weekend, thank all gods, but we are facing colder weather than south Florida has seen in over ten years. 

Which means, yes, it's falling iguana weather. You've been warned. 

A (Partial) Month of Lap Maggie

Sometimes I think back to when I was looking for a cat, and specified that I wanted a lap cat. Maggie certainly came through on that!

January 1, morning and night:

January 2:

January 3:

January 4:

January 6 (the 5th was the worst day for my bee-stung toe, which is probably why there are no lap pictures that day), morning:

Night:

And not on the lap, but come ON:

I missed the 7th, too; it was quite a week. January 8:

January 9:

January 10:

January 11:

January 12:

January 13:

January 14:

January 15:

January 16:

January 17:

January 18:

January 19: