Water and libraries don't get along

You know you're in for something bad when you show up to work to find SIX maintenance vehicles outside:




A hot water pipe in the ceiling over our back room burst overnight. It was an absolute mess, although it could have been much worse (could have happened on a Sunday, could have happened in the public area, could have started an electrical fire, etc). We don't have an estimate on the damage yet, but there were a lot of damaged computers, phones, books, people's personal stuff, plus the possibility of having to replace carpeting, drywall, cubicle dividers, cabinets and so on if any of them start to develop mold.

All photos were ganked from one of my coworkers.

The floor of my cubicle:


The bulletin board behind where Lori's/my computer used to be:


Carts of damaged computer equipment:


We were open to the public while dealing with this, and most of our patrons had no idea anything was going on. Our staff and our maintenance people are just that good. :)

Green is good

I've had this project on the to-do list for a while: a loopy crocheted dust cover for a Swiffer.


I love how cheerful and springy it is! And it's eco-friendly! Perhaps my cutting down on disposable Swiffer cloths will save an otter somewhere.

If you can do sc (single crochet, for the knit-types), you can make this. The loop is just a fancy-pants modified sc, and the loop stitch tutorial that the pattern links to is easy to follow. This was a nice way to use one of the stashed balls of Sugar 'n Cream cotton I had lying around.



I'm off to dust the top of my ceiling fan.

New purple yarn

There I was at work last Thursday, when one of my coworkers paged back to the staff area to tell me that my mail had arrived.

I figured she just meant my daily stack of magazines for processing, until I went out front to grab the mail bin and saw a lovely Priority Mail box sitting on top of the rest of the magazines and junk mail.

Yaaaaaaaarrrrrrrn.

I put in an order at Little Knits, and hadn't been expecting it to show up that quickly from Seattle. The box of smooshy goodness had 10 skeins of Ella Rae Silkience, "Italian Plum".


It's for one of the many sweaters I want to make. I'm not sure which sweater, but that's a minor detail.

And I broke down and got a skein of Kauni Effektgarn. I was in a purple mood when ordering.


I confess: I have taken to sniffing the Kauni. It has this wonderful natural woolly scent to it... which is no terrible surprise, since it is, in fact, wool. Wool that smells like wool. I'm not sure why I'm so taken by that fact. It's also mighty purty.

"If you gotta shoot, aim high...

... I don't want to hit the groundhog."

I had my annual viewing of "Groundhog Day" on Monday. I'm inspired to try to get myself out of a couple of ruts I've gotten into... one of which is never updating my blogs.

I've had actual progress on Ariann. The body is complete to the armholes, and I've got 5" of a sleeve done.



Not too much else happening on the knitting front. I spent MLK Day up in Baltimore with my gaming group, where we spent a few hours at La Tasca ordering what seemed like one of everything on the entire menu.



We also went to the Science Center before dinner... we got to see dinosaurs and tornadoes and stuff about global warming and space. Yes, all of us are in the vicinity of 30 years old. We agreed that the model tornado desperately needed plastic cows flying around in it.



Hope all is well out there!