I made a short-row heel

Just to show that I still knit from time to time...



I turned the heel on my Northern Lights sock. It's my first short row heel; not too shabby, if I say so myself.



I had a wonderful Thanksgiving with my family, and believe me, I know exactly how much I have to be thankful for right now. A whole bunch of wonderful things have happened as a result of getting myself back on the path that I was supposed to be on, and I thank my lucky stars for that every single day. I love my family and my friends and my job (even on the weirdo full moon days); I think I'm entitled to a couple of lines of sappiness about that every so often. :)

Anyway, Thanksgiving was very nice. I didn't get a ton of knitting done, just a little bit while my parents were watching a football game. All I had with me was the sock; Ljod's in a bit of a hibernation, since I need to figure out where the buttonholes go and I'm facing another long and somewhat boring section of stockinette. It's also hard to get jazzed about knitting a sweater when our temperature control at work keeps the building right around a balmy 80 degrees...

Arrrrr

I can't believe I didn't post this... I got it a bit before my birthday, so it wasn't together with the other yarnage when I was taking pictures of that.



Kathy was my birthday buddy at work, and she gave me a Lantern Moon sheep tape measure and this skull washcloth that she made!

And in my own knitting... I have about half a sock foot done in the Cherry Tree Hill yarn.



With the way it's pooling, I can definitely see why they named this colorway "Northern Lights". I think "plain ol' stockinette socks" is the way to go with this stuff. Even a basic stitch pattern like feather and fan was getting a bit lost, so the yarn's going to take center stage with these.

Three weeks later...

So, part of the reason I haven't posted in three weeks was because I was making the following, and didn't want folks at work to see it on the blog before I'd actually worn it.

I made a Hallowig...

It was going to be part of my Halloween costume, but didn't really work out. See the little flip on the bottom? That's after 10 minutes of blocking with a steam iron... and it was gone entirely within 20 minutes. Without that, it doesn't look like a wig. It looks like a hat that Went Terribly Wrong. This particular one, in the green, made me think of the melon helmet cat. Still, it only took about a week of night and weekend knitting, so at least I didn't spend a ridiculous amount of time making something that I ended up not wearing.

So, I had to change my costume plans:

I worry that so many of my FOs can double as fortune teller/pirate gear (I was going for fortune teller, but several people thought I was a pirate.)

My birthday was last weekend, and was celebrated with dinner at my favorite Indian place. Yum!

Jolene has picked up on my "I like bright pink" vibe... I can't wait to see what this Colinette Jitterbug looks like knitted up:


And Jody gave me this wool/tencel from Ellen's Half-Pint Farm, and a super-cute notions bag:




Birthday yarn rules! Thanks gals!

Saturday included a rather chilly trip up to Delaware to hang out with Jody, John, and some friends of theirs at the World Championship Punkin Chunkin competition:


I actually got a picture of a cannon firing where you can see the pumpkin (although you may need to click through and View All Sizes to actually see it)


It was an odd mix of people there. You had the engineers and folks who had made the rigs, you had a bunch of families, you had groups like ours who were just there to hang out and watch some siege engines, and then you had the drunk college students and rednecks, who made up most of the crowd. The organizers of this thing know their audience: case in point, the Skoal Zone tent. It was fun and completely bizarre, although I'd check the weather report a bit more carefully if I went again. Since I was already halfway to NJ, I left early and drove out to my parents' house in time for dinner.

Jody has decided that she and I should be sweater twins, and talked me into doing NaKniSweMo. We're each making Ariann by Bonne Marie Burns. A sweater by the end of the month is going to be a huge stretch for me, considering that I ordered yarn last week and just got the shipping confirmation a few minutes ago. Casting on halfway through the month instead of on Nov. 1 makes it a far less realistic goal for me, but I'll get done whatever I can. We'll see what happens. :)