Eat real food. Eat less. The only addition that I usually tuck in is 'Move more'. The secrets to good health. Eat real food, less of it, a wide variety and move more. Did I this weekend at a D&D convention? Nope. Not a chance. However, I open my canvas bag that holds my lunch in it's reusable containers (The birkenstocks are under the desk, it's still a little cool for them.) and see.. carrots and apples and an orange and a hard boiled egg and squash and apple soup and yogurt flavoured with homemade jam. All food my great great grandmother would recognize as food. Perhaps she might wonder at the orange, they were not exactly common in Canada, but still. Real food. Heavier than one might hope on the root vegetables, but it's winter in Canada, one works with what we have. I'm oddly more pleased with these than I ever was with the 'meal replacement bar' that I was gifted with. Now I just need to turn knitting into more exercise.

• Knitting Olympics: I finished.. okay I mostly finished. I finished my hat and took everything to do the mitts at Winter Fantasy.. and then realized that I had the wrong needles. The mittens were coming out WAY too small for even my small hands. Frog frog. Still, I learned fair isle, it wasn't so bad and I got the main project done. I call it a victory!


• Winter Fantasy: Oh my goodness, it's a long drive. 12 hrs in a car one way is cruel. I need to wring the budget enough to fly next year. It was, however, a good time. I ran 5 slots of the LG special, played some LG, tried out Arcanis and got some excellent social time in. Other than the drive, all good. I also scored some serious swag for...


• Gryphcon: 3 days, 5 GM, 6 slots, 6 different games, 30 gamers per slot and 1 very tired LG mistress. It went well overall from my perspective. Nothing went horribly horribly wrong and I didn't have gamers coming to me to yell about how they hated everything, so clearly it couldn't have been that bad.

All in all, I'm tired and seriously sick of being social and pleasant and really really really glad to pretend like I have a RL again. Y'know, the RL that does dishes and laundry loads that are bigger than 'I need this many undies and t-shirts and jeans to get to the end of the weekend'.

Now, I can get back to doing some knitting. I brought a sock to work for lunchtime knitting. I realized why I put it away.. first sock has a gauge of 7.5 stitches to the inch.. second one.. 8 stitches to the inch. I wonder if I'm relaxed enough to have my gauge back to normal? *laugh*

This is, of course, a longwinded way of saying 'suck it up, this post and every post 'til I find that safe place will be photoless'. So if you're here for the pretty pictures, I'm sorry. C'mon back when I've found the shy camera, or caved and purchased a new one. (My budget is hoping for option A).

The rest of you brave souls who are here with just my ramblings, thank you for your bravery. :) Picture with me, if you will, a tangled heap of yellow cotton and a tangled heap of white cotton. Think (thank you Yarn Harlot) piles of dental floss. Those are my finished Egeblad and my finished Vicki. Done. Unblocked and shoved in the bottom of the knitting bag to be photographed. *sigh*

In a fit of stupidity, I decided that knit alongs are keen and therefore I should join a pack of them. Say a custom fit aran sweater one (Follow the Leader Aran KnitAlong) and a self designed pi shawl (EZ as Pi group). Fortunately the aran is coming in tiny bites (well the first two bites have been itty bitty) and the pi shawl is on the sort of mellow timeline I'm into. (Start.. something.. sometime around the 22nd ish and finish it later. Whenever. Have some chocolate.)

And because I don't have enough WIPs, I'm thinking of partaking the Harlot's knitting olympics. Because /clearly/ some high pressure knitting is exactly what I need before 2 cons. Really. :) Think I can do a lace weight shawl in 16 days? Yeah, neither do I, but damn, it might be fun to try!

I did get to *contented sigh* pick up my lace again. Embroidery's been banished to the craft room, so's the (current) shawl from hell. (Sleeves in my Pi, chunky wool on 6 mm needles. It's huge, it's bulky and I'm not sure I like it) and I've got teeny needle and cotton in my hands again. Oh bliss. I decided to do Egeblad. Quit snickering over the name, I'm sure it's quite lovely in Danish. While holding my tongue at my mother's, I got the first sixty or so rows done. Mine currently looks like this:

I am, as always, rapidly running out of thread. Someday I swear I will figure out this whole guessing on how much is on a ball *before* I start, but apparently not yet. I might have more of the yellow, we'll see. I'm always amazed that somehow running low on thread makes me knit faster. As if somehow, by some miracle, I'll knit quickly enough that the thread wont notice and come off the ball and there'll be more. Hasn't worked yet. *grin*

I dont much go in for resolutions, I prefer not to set myself up for failure off the top of the year like that. I do, however, go for a retrospective on my past year. Usually to appease the thoughts that I didn't actually accomplish anything. So, for handwork, I managed six doily/tablecloth things (Wedding doily, Azalea, Balmoral, Primula, Stor Rund Dug and Vicki), a suncatcher, six dishcloths, three pairs of socks, a shapely tank, a faux sarong skirt (sewn, not knit), a stole, a shawl, three pairs of mittens, one pair of wrist warmers, 2 tatted ornaments and one hat. Add onto that 2 jams, 2 pickles, some jarred soup and cider mixes and yep, I think I can declare 2005 productive.

I still dont have batteries for the camera, so you'll have to close your eyes.. go on.. closed now? Okay.. picture someone who has been quoted as saying 'socks suck' and known to go barefoot until it snows.. okay.. now picture that person knitting socks. Over and over and over again. And slippers. And a shawl, but not a tiny ethereal shawl, but a huge honking 'done in chunky on broomstick needles (aka 6 mm)' shawl. *sniff* I miss my lace! Where did my lace brain go!

If anyone finds my lace brain, could you send the poor thing home?

I forgot my mystery shawl at work a few days ago. Today, it's damn cold in my office. Apparently I should wear shawls more often, everyone who's met me in the hallway has commented on it. Here's a better (I hope) photo of the final version. Thanks to chris_parsons for holding it for me to photograph.

The SRD fiasco is finally over. It's done, I ran out of thread one round from the end, which worked out perfectly. That last round and the cast off are done in white and I think work quite nicely in the piece as a whole. It got washed and blocked this morning.

After spending my morning pinning out a bazillion little loops, today's Devil's Dictionary page a day calendar speaks volumes to me. Patience, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.

The next project proceeds along nicely. It's been sitting in the UFO pile for *mumblemumble* years and finally it's cool enough to work in mohair. Here is the designer's page on the Poinsetta shawl. I have finished one square, I'm nearly halfway on the next square. I remember it being outrageously fiddly the first time I worked on it, I must be more accomplished with obnoxious yarns at this point in my life, it's fussy, but not too bad. A lighter needle would help, but I only have bamboo straights and I'd rather stab myself in the eye with one of those than knit with the damn things. So I'm on a metal circular which weighs a good two or three times what the entire shawl will. Needless to say, there's a bit of a power struggle between light as a feather fluff and 6 mm metal spikes. Mine looks, currently, like this. Do not expect a whole lot of photo updates on this one, especially as I do more squares the same. It will get dull fast. Honest.

Well I've gotten to row 91. I need to get to row 96 (including thread gobbling crochet cast off). It looks like this:

The ruler is hard to read, but it's has about a 6 inch radius at this point. I've got this much thread left:

If you're thinking that doesn't look like much thread left, you're right. We'll see how far I get in blue before the inevitable white stripe happens. Not enough thread is the story of my life. Not quite enough for this, I don't think my carefully hoarded stash of the long long discontinued Ballybrae is enough for a sweater in my size. Bah and bah a second time. I hate stripes. There are other options to not use stripes, but I'm reveling in being cranky about it, so I'll look for practical options later. Today, I'll whine. So Bah and bah again. Clearly this calls for more coffee.

Needless to say the SRD is starting to slow down on progress. Just as many stitches knit a day, but they look like so much less in comparison. I'm working on row 76 today. You would have gotten a picture, but my camera's batteries have died. Trust me, it looks like a bigger version of the last photo. Go look at it and then think bigger. Still stripey blue, although that's running out at an alarming rate. It might be small or have a nice big white stripe on the edge. I'm tempted by small, but that's the Oooh shiney factor talking.

I also have atrocious shawl photos. Cat puke salmon pinned out on busy beige comforter is not a stunning colour combination. So I wont inflict it on the unwary.. you have to click here or here if you want to squint at it and try and pretend like you can see a damn thing.

The SRD progresses at a mighty clip, I'm up to row 46, which is 35.6% done by row. I will run out of this ball of thread before I'm done, but I have A Cunning Plan. All right, so stripes are not all that cunning, but quit crushing my illusions. See? Ain't it purdy and lacy? As I forgot to include a ruler, it's about 3 inch radius at the moment.

The mystery shawl is finished, unblocked as yet, that should be soon. In theory. Gosh that sounds like yesterday.

Enough rambling for today, I'm going to go knit ending til I hate it. Shouldn't be all that long.