We interrupt this blog....

Knitting and sewing might be kind of slow for a while. Why?



The latest Jamie and Claire novel, "An Echo in the Bone" came out on Tuesday and I picked up a copy at the library yesterday. Sorry for the glare -- that shiny library cover is hard to photograph. I love this series! If you like 18th century historical fiction and/or tall, red-haired Highlanders, check it out. The first in the series is "Outlander". Be warned, these are for adult readers, there's sex, violence, betrayal, death and adult language in them. Some of the language is in Gaelic, though. ;-)

I have made progress on the second Mineral sock.



I hope to get it close to finished over the next couple of days. I'm going to a party today (if I'm not driving, I'll knit in the car on the way) and to my parents' house on Sunday. It wouldna be polite to take yon book wi' me and read it there, ken? [sorry, it's hard not to pick up the language from the book] I can knit and talk at the same time, however. ;-)

Boys night in....

The good, the bad and the ugly of my training and other stuff

The Good


Player piano between class and cafeteria

The Bad


Fire alarms: one at the training center Monday 10 minutes before we were done with class. The second at the mall on Tuesday, 10 minutes before I left after lunch. None since, thankfully.

The Ugly


Is this not the ugliest couch you've ever seen? To the upholsterer's credit, the patterns match really well.

Other good stuff

I got to spend a good bit of quality time with my friends Mark and Sarah and their kids. The three of us met freshman year at KSU and they got married after our sophomore year. They moved to MA after graduation and we've kept in touch, but we don't get to see each other very often. That's why I try to come to Boston for training as often as I can.

I had dinner at their house Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday Sarah and I went to her knitting group after dinner. Wednesday was Mark's birthday and I made them take me to Kimballs to get ice cream.


Yes, it was cold, but the ice cream was really good! [photo by Sarah]


There were goats there [photo by Sarah]

Tonight was one of Sarah's work-in-the-office days and her office is about 3 minutes from my training center. We went to a yarn shop after work/class. I might have picked up some yarn.


Queensland Collection Merino Spray in color 01

After the yarn shop, we went to a bead store and she stepped on the slippery slope of jewelry making. :) After that, we had a nice dinner together, just us girls.

I don't know if the goat picture counts as my critter picture, so I took a few pictures of Mark and Sarah's cats while I was visiting.


Butters has extra toes and likes to eat wool


Wolfgang has large feet, silky soft fur and likes to climb trees


He also has spooky, glowing eyes in the right light

The clean plate club

Warning: I'm traveling again and there will be nothing but crappy cell phone pictures until I get back home.

I'm in Boston again, so I had to make at least one trip to Legal Sea Foods. This plate used to be filled with wood-grilled sea scallops, mashed potatoes and steamed snap peas.


YUM!!!!!

I actually flew in on Saturday and drove up to Maine to visit my cousin, Annette. When we were kids we used to spend a couple of weeks at each others' houses during the summers, and were pen pals the rest of the year. We haven't kept in touch as well as we could have, but it was really great to see her and her mom and her youngest son. The older four kids are already grown and gone. Does she look like she has a couple of grandkids??



Yeah, time for me to quit the clean plate club, I think. :-( It was so good, though....

In less depressing news, I'm making progress on my second mineral sock:



The plan is to get together with my friend for knit night tomorrow, so I should make some more progress then. Never fear, I have other stuff to knit if I finish it.

Labor Day, indeed...

I'm late posting this but I was a bit burned out. Two of my coworkers and I worked nearly 20 hours over the "holiday" weekend. We had an upgrade scheduled for Saturday, which was bad enough, but then a series of problems burned us out and had us working again on Sunday. It was pretty awful, but at least we didn't have to back out the upgrade, which would have meant another lost weekend.

On the plus side. I finished my sock while I was there:



I started the second one, and have about 2" done, but I didn't take a picture of that.

I boxed up a bunch of stuff from my sewing room that I wasn't going to use to send to Iraq. I had some bigger pieces of fabric that once upon a time I'd planned to use to make clothes. I also sent a bunch of buttons, some marking tools (I had quite the collection of those) and a bunch of thread. The box weighed 9 pounds and I had to go two different post offices to send it. Apparently the one in Tower City has decided to close at random times, always when I want to go there.

I didn't get pictures of the box I sent, but I had helpers in the sewing room.


"Maybe you can send something from this box, Mama."


"This pile is mine, Mama."

My friend sent me this link. It looks very similar to my living room.


Blue


Max


Runt

I heard that Ripley was in it at some point, but didn't stay long enough to have her picture taken. The only one who hasn't checked out the cat trap is Princess Emma CrabbyPants. I guess she figures that's beneath her. ;-)