Eye candy

I spent my Saturday outside on my balcony, knitting. It was a gorgeous day here: 75 degrees and sunny. PERFECT outdoor knitting weather. I gathered up a smaller project and a glass of iced tea, and had a blissful afternoon.

A couple of days ago, I played around a bit with my camera and my Lorna's Laces stash. The next best thing to actual yarn--pictures of yarn:

I finished a sleeve!

The ball of yarn I'm on, working very hard


The current sleeve-in-progress:


And not just any sleeve, but a SECOND sleeve. You can see the first sleeve hiding in the background in the above picture. I spent a lot of time in NJ knitting and watching the NCAA conference tournaments with my mom, and finished the sleeve while I was there.

I also ordered some more Lorna's Laces...


This showed up on Monday, which was grey and dreary and involved my coworkers and me spending the morning cursing at Verizon. Again.

The telltale bag of yarn from Jimmy Beans Wool made it better:


How could that NOT cheer a person up? The colorway is "Robin's Eggs", which is the April '09 limited edition color. It's like candy. Smooshy wool candy.

Sorry for the absence

And just like that, I haven't posted in three weeks.

My grandmother passed away on the 11th. It came as quite a shock. She would have turned 95 last week, but we all thought she would get to 100 without breaking a sweat. She was in the hospital for a couple of days, then was moved into the hospice unit for a few hours before she died. I went up to NJ that day (I'd been trying to get there before it happened; my dad called with the news when I was about 30 minutes from the hospital), and stayed for most of the week to help my parents out. Grandmom's funeral was on St Patrick's Day. A number of friends of the family came to the viewing, some of whom I hadn't seen in 10 or 20 years. I also got to meet a few relatives for the first time... second or third cousins? Anyway, after the funeral, we somehow crammed about 13 people into my parents' living room, and had sandwiches and beer and sat around talking.

I have one of her paintings in my apartment now. And by "hers", I mean she painted it -- guess where my artsy-craftsy genes came from! I see her painting every time I go to the kitchen, and it makes me smile. Lots of wonderful memories. :)

I'll try to post a knitting update soon. There has been visible progress made since my last post!