Water under the Keel

It's been a busy couple of weeks.  I am again seemingly running myself off my feet again. So I'm going to take a deep breath and try to slow down. (I know that some of you are laughing yourselves sick at that comment, stop it.)

In fiber news, I did a hat for Lora K, which I liked, but as Sarah A put it, "I can see why you don't wear hats now."  Sigh.  Here's me modeling the hat for photographic documentation purposes for Ravelry. It looks better in person and I'm sure that it will look lovely on Lora.  I just look awful in hats.

Gina H's mom recently had surgery and Gina asked for volunteers for to a square for a blanket for her.  I took a spin on Ravelry to find some patterns as Gina was looking for floral squares, but I didn't like any of them, so I designed one. I wrote it up as a freebie on Ravelry, and you can download it here.  It's named, appropriately enough, Iris Afghan Square.  Shockingly original, right?  Also, if you are not a Ravelry member, I just put a download link for the square for a pdf, in the gadget boxes to the side of this post.  Apparently people like it, or it's because it's free, but 75 people had downloaded the file as of this morning.

I also finally got to give Kristie and Chris, what has been referred to as Secret Project II for those of you following along, or the Debbie Bliss Bunny All in One, for baby Alex. Attention Knitterly, if I ever say "oh, I'm going to do something in garter because it will be quick" during another baby wave, I would appreciate it if one of you would kick me in the head. Thanks. Now I only have one Secret Project left to unveil.

Anyway, moving on to the important stuff, here's pictures of baby Alex.

Alex is a cutie, but with such cute parents, what can you expect? 

I also had dinner with Lisa E last week, and it was great to see her.  We went to Taipai Tokyo because since the whole milk thing, I basically live there.  Asian food does not generally have milk in it, so I have a lot of choices, whereas other cuisines have little or no choices for me.  Of course we were there for three hours, because that seems to be a standard dinner length for us :) 

On Saturday last weekend, I went to Boston to see Laura V.  I know I've probably mentioned this before, but it's funny how much Boston is actually home for me.  When I cross the bridge entering the city from 93, I get a relaxed sense of calm and giddy butterflies in my stomach, like I'm excited to finally be home again.  Maine does not do that for me in the slightest.  In fact, when I cross the bridge in Portsmouth and go over the border, I get the feeling of having cement blocks on my shoulders, and I think, oh god, not this again (this is the PG version of that thought). I've lived in New Hampshire for 13 years now, but I don't really seem to care about it one way or the other.  But Boston makes me all sunshine-y and cheery.

We decided to do silly touristy things and take the T from Laura's to Government Center and go to Faneuil Hall and then to the New England Aquarium from there.  We grabbed some salads from one of the vendors and then got in line at the aquarium.  I forgot that it was summer and that it was not a school day. I did get some great pictures, courtesy of cleaning them up with photoshop after.  Here's an example to your left.  This is unedited, exactly as it came out of the camera. On the right is the picture after extensive fiddling with photoshop.  There are way too many pictures to even put a selection of them here, but there's a public link to my facebook album located here. 

After the aquarium, we were supposed to go to a restaurant that does shabu-shabu in Brookline, but there is now a Wagamama at Faneuil Hall, and since I had not been to one since I visited New Zealand, we ended up going there instead.  I had the ginger chicken udon which was teppan-fried udon noodles with chicken, egg, beansprouts, red and spring onions, mangetout and chili, garnished with pickled ginger and coriander. It was so yummy!  And it was so good to see Laura.

In other fiber news, I've been meaning to mention this for a couple of weeks, but I discovered a knitting comic strip. I was emailed by a woman on Ravelry that wanted advice about upsizing the Ruth's Cardigan in Kauni yarn, since I had mentioned it in my project that I was having to upsize it.  In responding I mentioned I liked her tattoo, which was a ball of yarn with a crown on it.  She responded that it was symbolic of the knitting comic strip that she writes, the Knit Princess.  You should check it out, it's pretty funny and her new book is available on Amazon.  There's also a link in my blog list.

In current project news, I'm working on Jackie Erickson-Schweitzer's Smoke Ring with Lace Edging which is a cross between a cowl and a wimple.  I'm using Jaggerspun Zephyr which is a merino silk blend and I'm quite liking it now that I have it on bamboos.  Metal needles weren't working so much, they were too slippery for the yarn.  You can't really see what it's really going to look like because lace always needs to be blocked within an inch of it's life, but I'm happy with it so far.  I may even be able to wear it to work with a suit.

This weekend we are planning to be slugs, other than me needing to do laundry because I have no clothes left, and balancing the checkbook and paying the bills.  I have no plans other than guild and I am not making any.  I am going to slow it down, damn it.

That's all the news that's fit to print.  Stay tuned for breaking news.