I'm feeling better....

I'm alive and I can function again. I was going to work over the weekend, but ummmm...yeah...that never happened...

What did I do??? Started new socks. Socks with any of the sock yarn I recently received??? Ummmm....no. They're a gift for someone else and I didn't want to use any of my gift yarn (that's for me) and the intended recipient doesn't really like reds, so the new STR is out of the question, so, I went stash diving and out came this.
It's BMFA's lighweight Socks that Rock in the Lagoon Colorway. I'm using Sock Bug's River Rapid pattern on size 00 needles. It looks fantastic in this colorway. No striping, no pooling. I absolutely love it. It will be hard to give these away, but alas they're already to big for me. :-)

I love my friends!!!

It's been a very, very bad week and only a few bright spots. The first amonst them is my birthday gift from the wonderful Carmen.
And then when I came home today after, the absolute worst day of the week. Which started with a migraine, but I went to work anyway... I came home to two packages on my doorstep. The first, a birthday gift from the wonderful Teri.
It's Lime & Violet Sasquatch sock in the Parcheesi colorway. It's so many colors all at once...pinks, purples, oranges, yellows, browns, even a little green. It's so pretty. It's sitting right next to me so I can pet it. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you for making my day! Because, man did I need it.

The second package was my January Blue Moon Fiber Arts Rockin' Sock Club yarn. I love it as well. I'm not going to post right now because I don't want to ruin the surprise for those who haven't received it yet, but it is beautiful yarn.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Yes, I survived my 33rd year and it was a good year full of changes. Location change. New Place. New Challenges. I'm looking forward to 34. I went to the movies in the morning with friends and then my brother and his wife took me out to dinner (at Sweetwater for you DC Metro folks. Yummy Steak and beer!!) I did get some yarny gifts. From a friend here, I got a gift certificate to the local yarn with instructions to buy myself something special. I also got a package in the mail from Joanna with Dream in Color Smooshy!
And some Claudia Handpaint!!! Woo Hoo!!!!

So, the after the birthday letdown was accute. Yes, indeedy. I went to work today for 4 hours. Tankfully I did get a lot of work done today though.

I finished the first Neopolitan sock this weekend. They turned out very well. Striping turned out fairly even throughout the sock.

I saw 27 Dresses this weekend and every woman who has ever been a bridesmaid should go see it. Oh, who am I kidding everyone should see it. It was hilarious and definitely one of the better Romantic Comedies I've seen in quite awhile. The past few years, the romantic comedy genre has kind of jumped the shark and have been kind of trite. This was the best I've seen in years. Besides it also has hotties James Marsden and Edward Burns, who is aging very well.

Snowy, snowy day...

It's a good thing I went to work early today so I missed the snow starting. By 2pm, we had quite a lot so I decided to go home early and work from home. I had this sneaking feeling that the city where I lived had not made any attempts at snow removal, and by golly, if I didn't turn into the city limits and all efforts at snow removal or containment were over. I drove 10 mph the rest of the way home... Ughhh! At least I made it home safely.

Even though I worked until 6pm after I got home, I still felt like I had all this time this evening. I made dinner, folded laundry, actually hooked up my new telephone in my apartment (I've had it more than 2 weeks...) It was refreshing. I also got some knitting done this evening. I'm almost done with the first of the Neopolitan socks.
I might have to rethink the name because as I got to the top where I switched to the 1x1 ribbing, I realiezed that I made 2 major mistakes up the whole leg of the sock... At two points I K4 in a row, instead of the 2x2 ribbing.
See the big rib in the middle there...yep. I'm sure mistake #2 was a direct result of mistake #1. I debated for quite awhile whether or not to rip out all 5 inches of the leg. I finally decided that since the socks are for me, I could live with mistakes. Now I just need to decide whether they're a "design" feature I'm going to repeat in the second sock or if I'll do the second one correctly. Hmmmmm...

Home again. Trip went well. Yeah. I got lots of knitting done. On the way I down, I turned the heel on the Neopolitan sock and got about 2 inches up the leg. On the way back, I knit about an inch and a half of the Tangled Yoke Cardigan. I've moved from the decrease section to the increase section. Yeah! Progress is being made and I love, love, love the Elsbeth Lavold and if I can ever get more at that price, I will definitely buy enough for another sweater. Pictures later.

It's restaurant week...

in DC. It's this fabulous week when you can go to downtown restaurants for a prix fixe meal. So, some friends from work and I went to Zengo, which was a latin asian fusion restaurant, which was a weird mix. Sushi and empanadas on the same menu was weird. We wanted to be a little adventurous and try something we wouldn't try for it's normal price. It was mostly very yummy. I got chicken lettuce wraps, kobe beef brisket with craime fraiche potatoes and dessert. Dessert was less than inspiring, but I was full by then anyway. Oooohh, almost forgot the very yummy Mango Mojito. It was fun.

Other than that, I'm packing for my trip tomorrow. My co-worker is driving so I have knitting time. Yipee. Nothing else interesting going on. No internet until Thursday night, so I'm off until then.

I miss the red carpet...

It's bad enough that tv is ruined by the WGA strike, but tonight we missed on of the few nights of the year where we can totally make fun of celebrities in dresses that cost my year in rent. You know, I can understand the whole not working on the shows, but ruining the night for the Hollywood Foreign Press??? I think they may have lost more than they gained in this one. Other than missing the the red carptet and getting annoyed at the inane presenters, I actually like that we were able to see the whole show in an hour. Maybe next year, we can do a combo. Fun red carpet show and hour long awards show.

I slept in this morning. I haven't slept til noon in more years than I can count and I did it twice in one weekend. I must have been tired. Although, because I slept so late, I didn't take a nap. I did miss taking a nap. I did all the normal weekend things today. Laundry, grocery shopping etc. I'm traveling Tuesday/Wednesday of this week again, I needed to get stuff done. Other than that, nothing interesting going on.

And the knitting goes on....

I think I'm finally out of the knitting funk. I've been knitting up a storm lately. I've got about 7 inches of the Tangled Yoke Cardigan finished. I'm at the end of the decreases. Yeah! Still so much more stockinette to go though. Totally loving the Elsbeth Lavold Silky wool. Still working on the Clapotis and am almost to the mid-point in that. No new pictures of those two, because once you get to a certain point, you just don't seem to make discernible progress for awhile.

I started a new sock on my recent travels. Can you imagine I did not have a single solitary sock on the needles and usually have one or more (darn sock funk).
But I'm liking my new sock. It's a little weird looking in the picture. The colors are much softer in real life and remind me of neopolitan ice cream, so they will henceforth be known as the Neopolitan socks. I started this on my recent 3 plane trips in 2 days business trip. I should make significant progress on it as I'm making a site visit next week with a co-worker and it's a 3.5 hour drive each way. She, thankfully, is driving. Woo Hoo knitting time for me. The yarn is a hand dyed yarn that I got from an exchange once upon a time. It doesn't have a band on it anymore, so I have no idea what it is, but it's stretchy like Cascade Fixation, but much finer. I'm knitting it on zeros with 60 stitches.

I got my first birthday present today...a gift certificate to the local yarn store. Woo Hoo!!! What to buy, what to buy... I'll have to think about what I want to get with it. Definitely something special.

I did not go car shopping today. I got up late and finally put away all my christmas stuff (oops). I'll definitely have to go again next weekend. Can't put it off forever.

2 out of 3 ain't bad...

3 flights in 2 days, only 1 was delayed. Not too bad. I was up for 21 hours on Wednesday. I got to the point that when I actually went to bed, I was too tired to sleep. Getting up on Wednesday at 3am was easier than I thought. 2pm that afternoon was quite a bit different. As I was riding in the cab to the airport, I was musing, the last time I was up at 3am...I hadn't gone to bed yet... Wow do I live a tame life these days...

I started some new socks on the trip, but that's for another day.

What is the world coming to????

It's January 12th and I turned the air conditioning on....in Washington DC. I couldn't sleep last night because I was so hot and I even had my bedroom window open. Then today I came home and my apartment was 80 degrees. Ugghhh!!!! Since I only have a few hours to sleep anyway since I have a 6am flight (UGHHH!!!!!!) and the cab is coming at 4:15am (double UGHHH!!!!) I decided I needed to make it as comfortable for myself as possible. So in order to actually attempt to sleep tonight, I'm going to take a bath at 9pm and then go to bed. Hopefully I'll be all warm and cozy and I can actually catch a few hours of shut eye before the alarm goes off at 3:20 tomorrow morning. I'll be halfway to Chicago before I even get out of bed normally.

Knitting still continues on my sweater, but I'm to the dreaded "knit and knit and knit and knit and not get any longer" stockinette plain of the main body. I'm trying to start a pair of socks to take with me.

I went car shopping today. I drove 2 Volvos and an Altima. I really liked the Volvo S60, but not sure I'm willing to pay that price tag... I'm still going to go and drive more cars. I did remember what I hate shopping for a car. Car salesmen. Ugghhh. I liked the Altima, but the salesperson was enough that if I wanted to buy one, I would go to another dealership to buy it in hopes that I would get a better salesperson.

Other than that, didn't really do a lot today. Knitted a few rows on my Tangled Yoke cardigan.

Thank god it was a short week this week. I don't think I could have taken a whole 5 days this week. I hit the snooze button 7 times this morning without even really realizing it. I got up a 7:10. And thank god I forgot my yogurt and stopped at McDonalds because that was the only thing I ate until 8pm this evening. Busy day. I was supposed to go to Chesapeake next week, but I'm not going to Chicago and New York for meetings and may still go to Chesapeake on Friday, but I'm really hoping I can reschedule that so I don't have to drive 3.5 hours twice in one day after traveling and attending meeting the previous two days. I have to get up at O dark 30 on Wednesday to catch the 6am flight to Chicago. Ugghh! On the road again. It always seems my travel is packed into a couple weeks time frame.

There wasn't any knitting today. I need to go shopping for a suit tomorrow and I'm also thinking about maybe stopping at a couple of car dealerships to begin car shopping... We'll see. I'm going to try to sneak in a nap and some knitting as well...

2008 resolutions

I feel a little bit like the beginning of the Bridget Jones movies as I start to write my yearly goals... In my 33/34th year...

I'm going to try to keep it simple this year. So much happened last year, I think I need to avoid making any sweeping declarations and just go back to basics. So, here we go:

1. Exercise more - because any exercise would be better than what I do now.
2. Explore DC metro and the East Coast. I want to keep up with my goal of going one new place a month and try to explore a bit farther out as well. I'm on the east coast, I might as well take advantage of it.
3. Get my work organized so I don't work 10-11 hours every day. This may be a pipe dream, but I want to try to leave by 6pm at least 2 days a week.
4. Continue my efforts to eat healthy. More fruits and veggies. I've been doing fairly well so far.
5. Get out and meet more people. I didn't mean to imply I wasn't meeting people, I just feel that I'm not getting out and meeting people and that's mostly my fault because I need to make a greater effort. Part of that means I need to do #3 so I have more available time.
6. Knit more for myself. As I looked over all the finished objects from last year, 2 pairs of socks were for me. I started several more objects for me...clapotis #4, Lady Eleanor, Vintage Velvet, Miss Lambert's shawl, Surplice sweater & Tangled yoke sweater, but they all sort of went by the wayside. The Clapotis I did finish, for "me," I ended up giving to someone else I felt needed it more than me.
7. Connect and reconnect with my friends who live far away. I keep moving and now I know people in several different cities so I need to make sure I keep in contact with everyone and not just read their blogs and think we're connected. This means phone calls and e-mails and not let it get swept by the wayside.

So that's it for this year. Here's hoping 2008 is as good year.