That's me holding it up. It's taller than I am.

on the worktable

me looking through it

me wearing it!

So. I finished the Clapotis very late Tuesday night, or very early Wednesday morning. I even sewed the ends in Wednesday night! I haven't gotten photos yet but that's on the list of several chores we have today.

So gold medal for me!

First, we're going to go pick up Zola's ashes and pay the balance on our vet bill. They let you pay in installments in certain circumstances. As one of the doctor's said, "When your file is this thick you can pay in whatever installments you like." We'll bring her back home because I'm not comfortable running errands with her ashes in the car. So she'll be in the living room with Ascii's ashes.

Then, we're heading over to Village Wools to buy yarn for me and our friend in the Netherlands. I've talked her into making her Rogue with Silk Road Tweed so we're picking some up for her and shipping it in a box of goodies we're about to mail. She insists on paying me for the yarn which is ok but I hope to pick up some extra presents too.

Next we go to the dentist who is also allowing us to pay is gifuckingnormous bill in installments. This was our nice New Year's surprise. We thought we'd paid our portion each time and the rest would be covered by insurance. However, we were never really given an estimate of how much it had all actually cost. Until after the insurance had paid their part, then we reveived a lovely bill for the remaining chunk of change. Happy New Year! This guy charges way way too much. But he's the first dentist we've found in New Mexico whom I don't want to punch in the head. So we're trying to decide if we want to continue to pay these outrageous prices or take the risk of using another punch-in-the-head dentist.

Then it's craft night at Beverly's and hopefully, if her wheel gets delivered today, I'm going to bring my spinning wheel and get some spinnin' done.

Somewhere in there we're going to take photos of the clapotis and mail stuff. So I'm hoping I'll have a chance to post photos sometime today but I'm not sure.

I didn't finish le Clap Sunday night. Or last night for that matter. On Sunday I got lazy and forgot to finish the last few rows of Section 3 before starting Section 4 and had to tink back to fix it. I was also easily distracted by the shiny email box and cleaned the bathroom. That, in itself, warrants a holiday.

Last night I made some progress. Amidst a scary PMS meltdown wherein the world is very lucky I didn't have access to "the red button." Did you feel the earth shudder with relief at around 10:30 last night? Yeah, sorry that was me. Anything and everything was getting on my nerves last night. DAMMIT why are they showing this stupid skiing stuff don't they know I want to watch the tacky ice dancers? Oh noooo I'm out of diet cokes. But I don't waaanna go in the dentist tomorrow. How dare that person say that about my adopted home state?!? If they don't like it they should leave! Fie! Fie I say! Yeah, it was bad. And scary. A few decent meals and lots of sleep later I'm doing much better today.

I'm making progress on the clap though. About to do the sixth repeat of Section 4, then that half-repeat, then I'm on the home stretch. It's conceivable that I'll finish it tonight at Knit and Kvetch but I don't want to jinx myself again.

If you guys would just stop posting in your blogs I'd get bored and go knit. Or stop posting insane completely fascinating stuff like this. Thanks to that site I've actually started reading and knitting at the same time.

Beverly has proposed that we pick up and try to finish our old moldy projects during Lent. Which is odd because, not being one who really observes Lent, I'd already thought that might be a good period of time to try a committed yarn diet. It's short enough where I won't go insane but long enough where I might stop the compulsive shopping. Thus the yarn photos. I'm trying to remember and appreciate what I have. But I'll definitely pick up my pumpkin patch shawl. It's close to done and I'm sad that I had to put it down to start the Giftmas knitting. And I might even start working on that damn baby sweater. I'd overestimated the size enough such that the cutieniece will probably still fit into it.

So. We're going to Village Wools on Friday as planned to buy some yarn and stuff. They were broken into last weekend and everyone's trying to help them out so they can fix their ceiling and still be able to move to their new place in May. I'm going to buy this as well. Light-sensitive glow in the dark yarn. Holy shizzle fizzle. That's right it's so incredible I reverted to Snoop Dog Speak rather than outright cussing- also rare enough to warrant a holiday. Reenie was generous enough to put it on hold for me until Friday. She. Rocks.

In other news I've been drinking an Odwalla smoothie every day and all the pets are just fine. Everyone was on the bed in a big pile earlier. I am going to go warm my feet in a big hot bath now. And have a snack. Mm hummus.

That's right! I'm bringing FO friday back! At least for this week. And hopefully I'll have my clappy done for next friday. Also I think I may use FO to stand for Fiber Obsession and show off some yarn sometimes too.

These are some oldie buttons I made a while back for it. Feel free to snag. I'm on a button binge so I might make some more.

So. This I finished this a few weeks ago but I'm going to show it anyway.

It's a very very very long airy scarf. Like ten plus feet long. Knit using a nice little sportweight kid mohair new wool blend from Dale of Norway. Why yellow and why this yarn? Because it's for my mother-in-law who loves yellow and it's very hard to find a non-poopy colored yellow yarn that isn't for babies.

I think she'll like it. It's long enough to wrap it around twice and have it drapey in the front. That's how she wears her scarves.

In UFOlympic Clapotis news, I dropped the eighth stitch last night, the one with the longest drop in the corner. Halfway through ball four of six. I even watched some ice skating. I haven't really been watching the Olympics because it seemed like every time I turned it on they were showing that silly curling stuff which automatically makes me sleepy. I'd wish I could catch more snowboarding (is that done?). Bill the houseboy used to go up to Taos to snowboard. Strangely, I've made my best progress while watching Dancing with the Stars. No idea why.

It took me a few days to feel like knitting again. I would pick a project up sometimes and absentmindedly do a few rows but my heart wasn't in it. I was mostly eating spicy mashed potatoes from Popeyes and watching Tivo. We all have our ways of coping right? The good part is I did get a little housecleaning done. And lots of cuddles from the kitties and Winter. It's funny to say this but they knew something was up with Mom and were all trying to comfort me in their own ways.

Yesterday I officially got back into the knitting groove. While I haven't finished my second Jaywalker sock (almost to the heel) I decided to just pick up my UFOlympic Clappy and see how the rhythm went on working with it again. I hadn't knit a stitch on that thing since September? October? A long time in my knitting world.

I had Tivoed the opening ceremonies so I was a good little UFOlympic knitalonger and started working on le clap while watching almost four hours of pyrotechnics and people in silly outfits. That's probably disrespectful but I had a very hard time not giggling at such odd and melodramatic spectacles as people on ice skates with big flamethowers on their backs shooting fire off the tops of their heads. It was like a weird version of Starlight Express, which is plenty wierd by itself.

The people who formed images like the skiier and the dove were neat though. And, of course, Pavarotti singing Puccini., well I could've watched that all night. I'm enjoying all the footage of Italy as well. I never got that far north when I was there but I did see some snow in Venice. Strangely I have not caught much of the actual sports. Like a complete girl I like the figure skating and that's about it.

But tonight and tomorrow night, I'm sorry but olympics be damned. Westminster's on and that's what I'm watching! I've enjoyed watching it since 1991 when I had a week to decide whether I wanted to stay in Birmingham and go to school or move to Australia with my parents. Even when I didn't have a purebreed dog, nor any real interest to own one, I've watched it. Now that I have a ridgeback that's had a few cousins win best of breed (one even won best of hounds!) you bet your bippy I'm watching. So me and my clap will be doing that this evening. Winter will probably watch a bit too before taking a nap. She watches the screen when I'm watching shows with dogs on them.

As far as progress on clappypants I'm doing pretty well. I'm on my third skein of six and I just finished repeat number five of twelve in the straight section. So I'm about halfway. At this rate I'll be finishing it this week and have time to finish my Jays before the closing ceremony (which will probably be just as elaborate and fiery but I will try to refrain from giggling).

I haven't taken any photos in a few weeks so I don't have images of the superlong airy scarf I knit for my mil or the oddball fuzzyfeet I'm working on for Cody. Or progress on clapster. I'll get some today before I get any work done.

I did officially sign up for Project Spectrum yesterday and just for fun made a few buttons for it, mostly because I hadn't seen any designs with a color wheel and I thought that would be neat. Feel free to take them.

I don't mind hotlinking from my site (I have a very generous host and lots of space I even survived being boingboinged with an audio file and didn't even make a dent in my bandwidth) so if you don't have a lot of space or have trouble working with graphics you offically have my permission to hotlink these buttons. Just these buttons. And just hotlinking from my site my site mmkay? I made different sizes for each too.

Broadway Marquee Style


Painterly Colorwheels




Partdridge Family Bus



Some medication trademark image-looking design with a colorwheel

Enjoy!