Sometimes

...you just need chocolate for lunch.



And if that chocolate is wrapped in pastry, deep-fried, sprinkled with cinnamon sugar and served with ice cream, so much the better.

Look, Joan! Flowers! (It officially hit 80 here yesterday.)



Baby sweater in the wild, with permission from Baby's papa.



(Bad color on Baby shows better color on sweater. He doesn't look like a tanning-bed accident in real life.)



(More natural coloration. I am not Pioneer Woman with Mad Photoshop Skillz.)

Additional randomness, I would like to tell you: if you are at all a plus-sized woman (which for the store in question means 14 or above, I think, and we will not comment on that at this time) and you have a hard time finding pants that fit, do please go right now to your nearest Lane Bryant and get yourself some Right Fit pants. I have THREE pairs of them, and I actually leave the store smiling, with a spring in my step, instead of either fuming or near tears, which is the usual. They redid their sizings so they are based not only on measurements, but proportion. Therefore, a woman with wide hips and thinner legs isn't trying to squeeze herself into the same size as a woman with a narrower waist and more booty. Refreshing, truly. I lurve them. Go buy them. Go tell your favorite store that everyone should have these options - even skinny stick women. (I would suggest that men have the right to nicely-fitting jeans too, but until they start making as many easy-care, attractive clothes for women as men get, I'm keeping mum.)

I am going to the lake this weekend and only packed four knitting projects. Is that enough?

Sock Madness (Ravelry link) starts soon and I can't wait.

And to complete the random, my wrist hurts.

D is for...

DONE!

My first ever completed adult-sized sweater.









(Note - my hair is wet, not greasy, and yes, I should have been standing up straight but I wasn't.)

Four Seasons Eyelet Cardigan, from Classic Elite City Park
Less than 16 full skeins of Classic Elite Four Seasons, 70% cotton/30% wool, in Blueberry
Knitpicks Options needles, mostly 4mm (US6), though I think I blew it and used a 7 for the back)
Started in September, 07; finished February 08
Buttons from Grandma's Spinning Wheel.

I love this cardigan, and I can't wait until it gets hot so I can wear it (in the office, where the AC is in the control of a horde of menopausal, hot-flashing women). When the Bug saw it yesterday, he said, "Wow, look at THAT!" Kinda made my whole day.

So. Very. Close.

Seams are sewn, buttons are installed.



I LOVE these buttons. (Click to embiggen.) It's a good thing, too, since they are sterling silver and were stupidly expensive (for buttons), but I think they look wonderful on the sweater and I couldn't be happier.

Except for one little thing.



Surgery is scheduled for this afternoon.

And a few Bug and sky pictures, because I have been remiss in my duties to tell you that my kid is the cutest ever.



Honkshu.



Neon frosting on face courtesy of Daddy.



Watching Mama with her sweater? BOR.ING.



Late sunset on eclipse day last week.

A whole week.

It just slipped on by. Nothing special happened, but it was all nice. I knitted, I sewed, I snuggled on the Bug, I enjoyed the sunshine, I enjoyed the rain when it got cold (yeah, a drop of 30 degrees overnight is cold no matter how you slice it).



It doesn't look that impressive in my little cell phone photos, but the clouds were covering most of the mountains and that snow level was down to 3000 feet. (I think my part of Tucson is 2000-2500, so it was close.) Thursday our high temp was at 3am, and our low was at noon. Heh.

Saturday we packed up and went to the lake. The little lot was green and soft and damp, a far cry from the usual hard pack that is my yard at home. The Bug had a grand time kicking weeds and running free and poking sticks in the mud, and I had a beer and some camnesia. There was knitting, a little stitching, and a lot of kicking back and watching the campfire. I wish I was still there now.

Lovin' the weekend

Oh yeah, this was a great weekend, and I have lots of photos of warm for Joan. I think I will figure out one of those mosaic thingies so you all don't die of the boredom. Note the wearing of shorts in these photos. In February.



Click to embiggen and see the individual stuff.

Here's the most telling image of our warm weekend, though. Most of it was spent like this:



Some other few random photos, since I have them now.



Year of the Hat, FO #1 (I call this my glamour shot.)
(Coronet, from Knitty, in Cascade 220 Paints, unknown colorway, 143 yds, 5mm needle)



The camel that followed me home.



Also, a small knitterly PSA: A few weeks ago the Bug broke one of the cables in my options set. I emailed and asked what I should do, and customer service asked for the cable length that had broken and promptly sent me a replacement SET (TWO cables, the way they normally sell them, and four end caps) free of charge. Based on that, I'll still be recommending the Options sets to anyone who asks (or who gives me the opportunity to proselytize on the needles' virtues).

C is for.... converting Ceige!

Yes, it's true, I think we have a fledgling knitter on our hands.



She texted me to say that already her knitting made her happy and it calmed her down after her homework was frustrating her. There was a threat from her SO to put her on a yarn budget. When the baby ripped out her needle and broke the yarn, she just picked up the stitches again and started with the working yarn. I think she's finding her way into the fold. HOORAY!

My own knitting was less successful yesterday. While trying to sew in my cardigan sleeves, I realized I have to reknit the sleeve caps AGAIN. This meant learning how to "calculate" sleeve caps and write up some notes and do some math. I think if I can do these caps successfully I will be able to design my own sleeve caps in the future, which will make me happy. (I can do the math to adjust other patterns to my size, but the sleeve caps always throw me.) I even found a little free program that allows me to create my own graph paper based on my row and stitch gauge. How excellent is that? (If you are interested, it's here. Scroll to the bottom to download the program. FWIW, I did it last night and have seen no ill effects or malware on my system, but I haven't checked it extensively. Caveat emptor, and all that.)

Ice on the car

and greenery on the ground.



Can you see the eensy leaves? It was darn cold (for here) when I took that picture, but the tiny leaves are so happy. It's almost spring planting season 'round these parts.

And courtesy of KMKat:

Your English Skills:

Grammar: 100% Punctuation: 100% Vocabulary: 100% Spelling: 80%

Does Your English Cut the Mustard?

Thay dint tell me wich wurd I spelt rong.

Yesterday I went for knit night and starting the seaming of my cardigan. Given the amount of chatter that went on, I only got the two shoulder seams done, and I was happy to get that much finished. Maybe tonight I will get a sleeve set in.

And also, HOORAY! Today is the first day in WEEKS that I have been able to breathe through at least one nostril on a consistent basis! This of course means that I am due for a big fat head cold in, oh, about a week. Sigh.

ETA: remember Ceige (scroll to the bottom), the recipient of your knitterly mojo? She took a knitting class last night and this morning I received the following text: "I keep wanting to pull my knitting out of my bag to practice but I need to finish my school work first. I think I'm in trouble." WOOHOO!

B is for Bleargh.

Don't you think that should be a town name in Ireland somewhere?
No, alas, it is just bleargh. We skipped the Disneyland trip in favor of recovering from double-pneumonia (DH), processing a lovely head cold (me) and being a giant poop (the Bug). There was as little movement as possible, though it IS hard to rest when one's son thinks one is a jungle gym (or worse, in DH's case, that his lap is a trampoline. I guess Bug will be an only child now.)
The rest of the weekend was spent alternately keeping the child out of the bag of rice - nothing says fun times like broadcasting rice throughout the house - and knitting. I finished the pieces of the eyelet cardigan and sortof blocked them, and I started on the first of the Year of the Hat hats. It is actually coming out quite nicely in the yarn I posted last week. I just have the decreases left to do and all will be well until I have to think about pattern and yarn for February's hat. I think I will start seaming my cardigan tonight - it got darn chilly out there, and rainy to boot, and my ONE cardigan (store bought! oh the shame) is falling apart. Too bad I don't have one more day of weekend - I could probably have it mostly done if I did.
Sadly, no pictures since I spent my days lying about, drinking tea and Airborne and using copious tissues, and listening to the DH cough. It's true, B is also for Bad Bad Blogger. Mebbe tomorrow there will be enough light for some pictures.

PS - I also signed up for Sock Madness 2! Jo, are you ready?

Lene The Mighty Trivia Warrior

All hail Lene. Lene is all that is good and pure and wonderful in this crazy world. Lene is wise, I am naive. Lene is brilliant, I am stupid. Lene is fast, I am slow. Lene is the grand winner of last month's trivia contest, I am only #8.
All hail Lene.
Your socks are in progress.
And you are going DOWN this month.

a bunch of crap and some links

I decided to get off my butt and take some photos. Alas, none of them will do much to warm Joan up, since it was just at dawn and the sky was cloudy anyway. Still, it's yarn and Bugs and that's always good in my book.

First off, I have some of Judy's Arequipa in the Atlantic colorway. This stuff is so soft I want to eat it. Or stick it in my bra. I rubbed it on Bug's cheek and he said, "Soft for Mama!" Yes indeed, it's all for me! It's being turned into Anne's Gust scarf, and it's so delicious I can hardly stand it.



(Forgive the craptasticness that is that photo. The yarn has a bit of halo, but it's not THAT fuzzy.)

Next up, we have the beginning of the Year of the Hat. This is Cascade 220 Paint in some colorway I forgot to look up. It has plums, browns, rust, and all shades in between, and will (most likely) be a Coronet for SIL R. (The picture didn't capture the colors well - those bright red streaks are actually a muted rust.)



The Bug blows you a kiss.



Joan sent me a little You Make My Day bloggy thing. She said something about my willingness to break the law at her behest. You know, only the best for Joan. :-) So I'm supposed to list 10 blogs that make my day (besides Joan's, of course) and link them for your enhanced reading pleasure. This is hard, since I don't read blogs unless they DO make my day, but I'll try to narrow it down a bit

Here you go:

1. Center of Gravitas. I always learn something, and no one does teh snark like GayProf.
2. Frank Notes. The man is a crafting genius, and I gain a pound every time I LOOK a picture of his cake. (Yes, actual cake, that is not a euphemism, you sickos.)
3. Purling Dervish. For the Def Leppard bed socks alone.
4. Shut Up And Knit. Because it's Cookie. And I like the abuse.
5. Cabin Cove. The colors! The spinning! The asses!
6. Knitspot. I want to be Anne if when I grow up.
7. The Seated View. I hate it when she posts things that make me think.
8. Smatterings and RiverRim. I'm combining these two because I love them for the same reason - the peaceful beauty of the pictures and the amazing work they both make look easy.
9. What Housework. Piggies and cows and peacocks, oh my! And Milo, and pumpkin pie from scratch, and Real Vermonter yarn, and buying local... It goes on and on.
10. Trailing Yarn. I love that she complains about not having enough knitting time and whips out all these (handspun) sweaters all the time.

A little more on that last subject

So, it occurred to me that if I were going to make a point, I would have given it some thought and formed a central thesis with examples, like GayProf. (And my examples should have come from Wonder Woman, to be truly authentic.) Alas, that required work and thinking, and since I was already at work, where I avoid thinking as much as possible, I slapped that link on there and ran away.
I let it percolate all week and came up with precisely nothing new and thrilling.
I shall not bore you with rehashing the same old crap. Unfortunately, I have nothing else new and thrilling either. This last week or ten days has been full of flu, fighting, stupid stupid work happenings (mine and others, and when will I learn that I can't stick my foot in my mouth if I keep said mouth SHUT?) nastiness, and relationship morass, and I am ecstatic to be done with it. January can bite me. Though I gotta say, the DH had a good idea when he presented me with chocolate cake for breakfast. That brightens any outlook. And really, since I am scheduled to be in Disneyland next week, can February start any better?
On the knitting front, I got nada. I have half a sweater front, half a sock, and a new skein of hat yarn, none of which are photographed. I don't even have any new Bug shots. January sucked the life out of me. Maybe this rain will put some life back.

A tidbit of random before I sink back into self-pity.

What does it say about me that I type my own name "pacalagag" more often that not?

Moving on.

Warning: this post is ridiculously heavy on the parentheticals and it's easier to type this warning than to rewrite.

There have been a few posts recently about oh... don't read my blog if you don't like me, don't leave nasty comments, if you hate me so much quit wasting your time here, etc. Having never been in the middle of a blog-related flame war (all my flame wars are work related, heh) I have little opinion on it either way. I read who I like (occasionally skimming if it's a subject I don't care about), I don't read who I don't like, I knit what I want, etc. So, I never gave it a whole hillabeans.

But then I read this. Take out the flippant attitude (but why? that's the best part) and disregard what could be questionable statistics (I didn't bother to check their sources) and you still have what could be considered some very good points that are related to some of the bloggy rants and posts that seem to come about in waves every few months or so.

Seven Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable


Discuss.

(Plus there's a whole set of new cusswords in there that I haven't even seen Rabbitch use yet.)

Flattened.

Wanna see what I knit this weekend?

Not. A. Stitch.

I have been flattened by a heinous bug. Not THE Bug, though he did his best to hurry me to my grave while I was laid low, but something else. Last year when I had no available PTO I was thankful that any illnesses I contracted managed to hit on Friday afternoons. Now that I have some time in the bank, I find being ill on a weekend particularly cruel. I didn't knit OR touch the computer for three days, which of course means I have surely lost this month's trivia challenge to Lene. (I was behind anyway, but the loss of three days of competition has surely put the nails in the coffin, as it were. I knew I was feeling better when I popped awake this morning and thought, "SHIT! I didn't play trivia!") I can hope that she won't rub my face in it too much since I was felled by illness, but I doubt it. ;-)

A is for Arizona!

Guess I better get on this whole ABC Along, huh? (I have totally dropped the ball on the spinning thing.)

A is for Arizona, the state of my birth and where I have lived for about 31 of my years on this planet. It's a deeply conservative place, and I managed to be a flaming liberal despite its best intentions. Southern Arizona, where I live, supports thousands of delicate species of critters from bugs and birds to mammals, and kills hundreds of homo sapiens a year who dare to cross her without adequate preparation. She's kind of a bitch that way.
BUT. She's not without beauty.

From Sabino Canyon:




From my back yard:




My favorite lake:




All that being said, after 31 years I'm ready for a new scene, y'all.

Warmykins*

Yes, I have some photos to make Joan and all your northerners feel all warm and toasty. It's not actually warm and toasty here, but you can't tell that from the pics.
These were all taken as I walked to lunch in the office park where I work. As always, click to embiggen the warmykin-ness of it all.


Look! Grass! And it's green!


A pathetic picture of a purple pansy patch. (Hey, Mel did it, so can I.)


Oleander buds. (I don't feel the oleander love most of the time, but they're some of the earliest flowering trees around here. Most of the rest of the trees are just starting to bud leaves.)


A collection of bright flowers. The big yellow poppy things make me happy.

And since I have no knitting content, I will leave you with this quote my boss said the other day. I can't remember how it came about, but she said, "I'm out of yarn. I am going to work on something else for a while." I will let you ponder that for a minute. Out. Of. Yarn.

*I don't know where I got that word, but I like it and I say it all the time and it's my blog.

Additional randomness

Yesterday, the DH cleaned the back yard. There were a ton of leaves, the dead pool, the dog yard cleanup, etc. The Bug helped Daddy clean all morning, and when it was all done, he played in the muddy water from the pool. No, it wasn't really warm enough to be playing in water outside, but that doesn't stop this kid. I think he was a walrus in a former life.




The havoc wreaking was not limited to outside, of course.
My eyelet sleeve:



Extreme close-up of the problem:



That, my lovies, is a broken cable. [sob]


Last night we went out for a date for the first time in months. (I think we've hired our babysitter three times since the Bug was born.) We went to a bar where our friend's band was playing. They had a guest singer.



I, of course, brought the knitting. Because I am hip like that. Obviously, I couldn't bring the sleeve - too big, too broken, not good bar knitting. I brought the sock I started the other day with my fab Dizzy Blonde yarn that La gifted me over the summer. I was loving the toe, and then I started on the pattern, and another problem occurred.



Forgive the crappy photos - I am too lazy to take more. Now, I enjoy the pooling. I am a fan. I think it's neat. But when one side of the sock is one color and the other side another, I feel like I'm not getting the full effect of the yarn, ya know? Besides, the colors I like best (deep purple and salmon) were on the bottom. Riiiiiiiipp. I had to sit there for, like, an HOUR, and all I had to do was listen to music and drink beer! Oh the humanity!

More FOs. I am on fire!

Actually, I finished the knitting of these in the last days of the year. I just never wove in the ends until I finished the DH's socks, and then I got lazy and didn't take any pictures. This delay works in my favor when I have nothing else to post.

Mad Weave Socks!



Pattern: Mad Weave
Yarn: A Piece of Vermont, a discontinued blend sock yarn that I can't remember, colorway Blue Columbine
Needles: Addi Turbos, 2.5mm
My take on the yarn: lovely, soft, and squishy. A tad splitty in some spots, but I believe that had more to do with the fact that I carried these socks around for EIGHT MONTHS as WIPs without knitting a stitch for a month at a time, than anything about the yarn itself.

Mods:

subbed an eye of partridge heel (loves me some eye of partridge)



and only twisted the little side cables in one direction so as to save my sanity



I don't suppose I need a cat in the house since one little Bug manages to interfere with my photo shoots successfully...



In other news, Ceige has signed up for a knitting class in her town. YAY! In her own words (from a text): "Are you going to tell your blogging buddies you've converted me to the dark side?" Heh. She has no idea...