Sunny Day

It's gorgeous and cold. The sun is out, trees are covered in the faint green of new leaves and teeny little blossoms. A beautiful, sunny day!

A nice thing about this area is that even with all the variations in weather, it is often clear and bright. Not the creepy cloudlessness of Southern California, but blue skies with wispy clouds to frame them.

Maybe it's just because it's Spring now, but I feel reenergized and content. Now disorder in my life makes me want to get up and clean instead of retreat in despair.

Or maybe, I'm just getting energy from swinging around my Pokewalker to level up my Pokedudes. :D Think of the calories I am burninating by jiggling my foot because I have that little walker held in place by the leg of a handknit sock! Wheee!

On a day like today, I look back on the sadness I felt and marvel. Was I really that unhappy? How could anyone be so filled with angst?

I thought of a Karan Casey song, Love is Pleasing. First heard it late last year on Prairie Home Companion and immediately went and bought the CD. Other than the darkness of the last verse (although, perhaps I felt that way too and am refusing to believe it), it tells the story of my Winter.

But now it is Spring and I will be going out to look for chocolates today. Yay!

Spring! Yay!

A busy week and the start of Spring! The pic is of a place called Savage Mill, whereat Veronica and I spent time at the Homespun Yarn Party on Sunday.

Looks creepy, huh? We weren't in that part of the old mill, just overlooking it. And whilst there, we ran into Eric the Knitter, and Donna and Candi, with two of her little cherubs. Such a warm day that we sat out on the deck to chat for a bit before the cherubs got restless and Donna's clan took off.

We've been a bit busy at work, fixing up stuff and things. It seems over the course of the past sprint, there has always been at least one of our team out with plague. I had a very, very mild case last weekend, and recovered quickly. Ed's out again this week with whatever he's had, poor guy. :(

Spring also means that a young lady's fancy turns to romance again. I've been meeting random internet dudes for coffee.

I have some random advice for said random dudes:

1. If you and I are meeting for coffee, I'll buy my own because I'm a modern girl. So please don't worry about waiting for me before getting yourself a cuppa!

2. Did we say coffee? Or lunch? If coffee, then I think I am not wrong to be surprised to find that you've eaten lunch right before I arrived. What if we got along well and I'm hungry after my cuppa coffee? Now we can't go eat something together because you're full, and I am not the kind of girl who wants you to sit watching me eat my lunch. Or perhaps that is your ploy to make a clean escape in case we don't click? Either way, it might be nice for you to move to a clean table so I don't need to sit there sipping coffee, staring at your pizza bones or something.

3. I do have a life, such that it is. If I don't call you or email you within 10 minutes of you calling or emailing me, please do not take offense. If, however, you feel the need to be offended, maybe you shouldn't email me and tell me how vexed you are. It makes you look needy, desperate and clingy. I am looking for a man, not a cling-on.

4. See number 3...I don't know if it's something in the water on the East Coast or what. It's happened to me more than once in the past couple of weeks and I am kerflummoxed. Is there some new internet dating contact rule that I've completely missed? =\

Tomorrow night is the knitting group's second anniversary party at Donna's house. Yet again, I am so glad to have met these women. They are awesomely friendly, sweet, and funny. My apartment smells like chocolate tonight, for I am baking Nigella Lawson's Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake. Nom, nom, nom!

Erin Go Whut?

Must remember to wear something green tomorrow. Sadly, my Saroyan will not be completed in time, but I'll take it along to knit night. It's halfway done (yay bigger needles).

I didn't think to look at the lunch menu for tomorrow. Maybe Becca will be making us something with corned beef!

Yay!

Blah. Ick. Phooey. Ooh.

Not even paying attention to Daylight Savings Time, I managed to sleep in till nearly 10:30AM. That is not like me; I am generally an early riser.

The following bout of violent sneezing provided illumination: I have a sort of cold-thinger, which also explains the cold sore thinger that sprouted up at the end of last week.

Now, I have had occasional lip-things due to stress. And, I started the year feeling extremely stressed, but have since settled into relative normalcy (as in, normal for me). When I started getting a lip-thinger, my first reaction was disbelief. Really? A lip-thinger? When I feel so good?

The answer was, unfortunately, yes.

I suppose the good side to feeling blech is that I am sequestered with my new toy, the Alienware MX11, which I purchased using my tax refund upon the lyrical descriptions of Mr. Moorgard. When he received his two weeks ago, he gloated in IMs. Well. I can see why. This little guy rocks my world (the netbook, not Mr. Moorgard)! And I have not yet gotten a cute little optical drive yet so that I can load it up with gamey goodness! It just needs a cute little name; it is too clinical to continue calling him MX11.

I've been working on my test knit socks; they are coming along nicely and I am at the point of creating the heels. Since I'm test knitting these, the designer asked me not to post photos of them in-progress...but they are very pretty. Unfortunately, they are also making my wrist hurt a wee bit since they are traveling stitches, like the Twisted Hourglass socks I recently finished. Something about them makes my carpal tunnel go PING!

That made me want to knit something on larger needles, so I started something new rather than reach for something already in progress. I am a procrastinator with a backlog of projects.

New project: Saroyan, being knit up in lucious Miss Babs Yummy sportweight sock yarn, Colorway: Verdigris.

Journeys

The knitters' retreat was very...interesting. Heh :) Veronica and I hit the road a little before 6PM and arrived around 7PM...at the wrong "lodge." Evidently, when the instructions were emailed that said, "Go to the lodge!" they really meant, "Go to the hall!" We found this out after Veronica parked her car, we unloaded it, and schlepped into the lodge with all our stuff.

Eventually, in the dark and over the unpaved, muddy road, we made it to the correct building, where it was freezing cold. Freeeeezing! Apparently, the heating ducts were not working, which resulted in shivering knitters standing in front of the fireplace trying to warm up.

And then, our "rustic cabin" that turned out to be something out of Army basic training, with concrete floors and musty bunk beds. Fortunately for us, we were in the uphill cabin, as once the eight of us in our building began running water, the toilet overflowed across the concrete floor in one of the cabins downhill from us.

We did not see any bugs of note, other than spiders on the ceiling. And the mousetrap beneath Veronica's bunk (which neither she nor I had noticed, and Catherine wisely refrained from mentioning until this morning) wasn't set or occupied.

While I'm not sure I will ever do this particular retreat again, I did have fun hanging out with Veronica and Catherine. Our mutual discomfort in the surroundings as well as our love of knitting naturally bonded us together.

I took a nice little walk along the muddy road, trying to find the hiking trails. While I didn't find any real trails, I made my way out to a set of wooden swing benches in a snowy field and sat swinging in the sunshine. It was a good opportunity to be alone for a little bit during a busy weekend.

The result? I'm happy. I love living here, I love the women I've met through knitting, and I'm enjoying being me. Feeling content has been a long time coming, but as you can tell in this photo, I'm really smiling. And not just because my Skew sock is turning out mostly okay.

Twisted Journey

Finally! I have actually finished a pair of Twisted Hourglass socks! :D

I started the first pair last year and absolutely loved them, then realized they wouldn't fit. Very sad! This year, I decided to do them in a much stretchier yarn. They are bright and I love them.

They also have some errors, but you know what? They fit, they look good (at a distance, hehehe) and I've accomplished something that I've wanted to do for a long time.

This coming weekend, I'll be learning how to do an entirely different sock construction, the Skew sock, while at a knitters' weekend retreat in Pennsylvania. Two of the women from the Wednesday knitting group are also going, so that will be lots of fun! Catherine is soooo funny, and Veronica is adorable. I'm really looking forward to spending time with them and learning new things. Yay!