Ready for a fresh start

Okay, the first half of 2009 hasn't been stellar. It's been stressful, expensive and painful. A brief re-cap:

- Someone backed into my car and I had to have it fixed
- Blue had a bunch of tests and was in the hospital for a few days
- My dad was in the hospital for two weeks, half that time in ICU
- I had to put a new roof on the garage
- I dropped a knife on my foot and had to have surgery*

The latest -- my dryer died. A couple of years ago I had to have it fixed and it cost less than $100. Not so lucky this time. The motor is shot and it would cost over $400 to replace it. So I went dryer shopping Saturday. Yippee. The new one should arrive on Wednesday. What a pain!

I'm definitely hoping the second half of the year improves....

In happier news, I've been working on my two sock at a time.



This is the basic sock from Knitting Circles around Socks, by Antje Gillingham. I'm almost ready to start the heels. I'm not sure I love the colorway, but they're knitting up pretty quickly in the heavier yarn.

I also started a new sock.



It doesn't look like much, since it's just 1" of 1x1 ribbing. But it will be a Show-off Stranded Sock and that's Patons Stretch Sock yarn in the Mineral colorway. I think it will look good with the stitch pattern. Better than any of the other cotton blend yarn in my stash, which is either self-patterning or stripey. I'm trying not to knit too tightly on these, since the yarn is stretchy and I'd like to keep the stretch in the sock. We'll see. I'm using my Kollage square DPNs and I'm still trying to decide if I like them. They're heavier than the Harmony Wood ones and they yarn itself is kinda floppy. Also, they're an inch longer than the Harmonys (7" vs. 6"). Kollage makes a 5" version, which I'm considering, but they didn't have them in the store when I bought these. I suppose I could ask if they could special order them for me. Maybe some other time, since I have a dryer to pay for.

I put together a quilt top tonight, but didn't take a picture of it. It's a group project for a guy at work. Since I'll be putting the binding on, I'll post a picture when it's done. I'm seriously wondering what I was thinking when I sketched it out on my white board. I really should have had the girls log cabin the strips, or alternate which way they put the strips on so I didn't end up with long strips of color all across the top and bottom. Not to mention that it would have avoided having to match seams. Oh well. It's a gift and it's not horrible. And since the baby is already here (her name is Amelia, it's that pretty?) we'll just have to live with it. I did make the block backgrounds symmetrical by color, at least.

Requisite cat picture:

"We thought we were helping when we fed ourselves breakfast this morning, Mama. I shared my 'Cheerios' with everyone!"

*I took the tape off it on Saturday -- it is indeed a Harry Potter scar. Woohoo!