Icicle Toes

I have finally figured out why I'm so cold all the time. Or at least since winter came and I moved my desk. The cat door that leads onto the porch is about 2 feet from my toes, and baby, it's been very not-warm here in sunny CA.

Now, I'm from Alaska. I know cold, and I'd like to make one thing quite clear. This weather? Not cold. But also, not warm. It's brisk and breezy and rainy, which makes my 1970's apartment complete with single-paned windows (and lots of 'em, thanks to being an end unit for which I am eternally grateful but also) not especially cozy. Ahh, I love a mystery solved. I knew it wasn't the over-indulgence in caffeine. Whew! And can I just point out that for an area that gets rain for a good 2-3 months out of the year (cry me a river), these South Bay-ers are NOT PREPARED for a little dew? The freeways are flooded and no one seems to know how to drive when they have to use the wipers, their lights and steer at the same time. Bah!

Several things have happened in the last week or so. I started another baby sweater and ripped the Seed Stitch Shoes, which will appear again in another incarnation, probably smaller. The baby sweater, affectionately dubbed the Egyptian Jungle Cardigan, has 4/5 of the pieces knitted and will be sewn, blocked and buttoned by the end of the weekend. Next up? Some sort of matching hat and booties. Perhaps the Cat Bordhi socks?

School started. Hooo, boy. This semester will be a test to see how well organized I am. Six classes, five of which are upper division? I'm a little nervous. Tomorrow I'm going out to buy what books I can from the SJSU bookstore, and ordering the rest from Powells. I'd order them all from Powells just on principle, but apparently textbooks ship from the "you pay shipping no matter what" warehouse. So there's that.

I also plied the Flor de Loto singles from a yarn cake, a la Miss Violet's suggestion. It worked like a charm!

Flor de Loto, 3.5 oz, 233 yards

I even remembered to set up the ball winder 6 feet away from the bobbin like Father Amos says to even out the twist in the singles. The plying did a great job hiding the inconsistencies in my yarn.

I got my grant money check from the school and promptly fell down in my 12-Mile Quest. A skein of honey-colored Trenna and some SeaSilk leapt into my cart before I could blink at Little Knits - that's 1686 yards of yarn on their way, so I need to get done with 3372 yards (2325 more than I have currently...) before I order anything else. That's gonna be a challenge, but isn't that the point? I DID have a metric crapton of fiber in my cart at Paradise Fibers, but walked away with only new bobbins and a tensioned Lazy Kate, which go under the heading of supplies - a heroic effort, I might add. I also got a 2-year Flickr membership, so now I'm "pro." Essentially that means the Disneyland photos are up and that I organized many of my photos into understandable groups.

Lastly, an interesting thing has happened on Fridays at Bella's ballet class. The first day I was there, no one said anything to me so I simply sat and knitted. The next week, one of the moms started talking to me about knitting and went to the car to grab hers. This week, there were two other women knitting with me and chatting, and one elderly Dutch lady who is utterly delightful offered me all her old patterns from "during the war" because she can't knit anymore due to arthritis. It's been fun and entertaining. Bella even got re-interested in her knitting this evening, and did two whole rows before her mother arrived to take her somewhere.

And now? I'm off to sit in a heated room and finish the cardigan. Ahhh, stockinette, where would we be without you?