Stick by your words, domesticat.

Despite what Matthew will tell you, I'm generally a nice and polite person, especially in public. I let my hair down on this site more than I often do in face-to-face conversations, and every now and then I have to learn to live with the little lump in my throat that comes with speaking my mind.

You never know when you're going to fall in love. Well, I wouldn't so much call it 'love' as I would 'deep and abiding lust.'

Adrienne Vittadini. Cristina. Color #4. [photo of skein]

Any knitter who tells you that there is no such thing as 'crack' yarn is a lying sumbitch who is desperately trying to cover up his/her addiction. In this world, there are workaday yarns, yarns you use to construct beautiful but unfussy garments; garments that don't attract a moment's notice. Then there are yarns that, once spotted in a store, never leave your mind, quickly ascending ranks to the level of obsession.

This is a shawl salvaged from a pattern gone desperately, desperately wrong. We're talking "throw the unfinished project across the room and screech out loud" wrong. I'd started working this yarn in an Irish net stitch, which looks like a large series of interconnected X's with open areas in between.

Except I was working with yarn that was completely and utterly wrong for that stitch pattern, and I kept losing stitches without realizing it. By the time I'd worked up about nine inches' worth of shawl, I folded my work over and realized in horror that my knitting was getting smaller with every row.

I knew that I needed a shawl by birthdaybash weekend, and that I was running out of time. I resorted to one of the quickest and easiest openwork patterns known to knitters: k2tog, yarn over, repeat. Luckily, desperation made me knit fast.

"Good morning, this is Yarn Expressions.""Hi. I think I've got the weirdest question you're going to hear all day. My name's Amy…"

"Ah, yes. That ball of green yarn you bought yesterday afternoon is sitting here on the counter. You can pick it up at any time."

"I tore my car apart yesterday after I got home, looking for that yarn."

"Yeah, you probably wouldn't have found it in your car… If you hadn't called by noon we were going to call you."

"It's been sort of a long week."

"We all have those."

If you missed the explanation of what "Blue Ambition" is, and why I'm knitting it, go back to the entry "Blue Ambition #1: grid up!" and catch up. I have a bit more detail to pass on now.

I took the week of Jeff's first week in San Francisco off, so that I could concentrate on the dragon*con tech staff work that was piling up, and thus I'm not as far along as I'd like to be. The good news is that I'm halfway through the knitting of the blanket.

Quickie post, as I'm facing the pharmaceutically-enforced time limit of having taken my sleep meds. Finish the post quickly, Amy, or there shall be no post at all.The first round of Hogwarts scarves are knitted, finished, and mailed off; time to get back to the baby blanket. Andrew and Joy picked out two colors, and for the longest time I couldn't figure out how in the world I was going to make a simple striped blanket interesting. I wandered through my books of stitch patterns, looking for something that caught my fancy.

Part One: Women

There's a rule. Don't go to Yarn Expressions on one of their variable-percentage sale days. (Draw a ticket to determine your discount. Most people get 20% off, a few people get more, one person gets 75% off.) Sure, the flyers are lovely, and the possibility of drawing one of the lucky tickets is enticing, but the actual experience of trying to make a purchase at the store on sale day can only be described as craptastic.

Errata in the truest sense of the word:

Courtesy of Brian, "Which Nigerian Spammer Are You?"

You are Princess Agbani. You are a student at the University of Nigeria, Lagos. You got my name through the chember of comerse. You have $21,350,000 to share, which your father, the king, left you. You have trouble spelling.

That scrumptious lilac angora yarn I bought in Colorado will be sacrificed to the good of this sweater, assuming I can figure out how to make it long-sleeved. I am somewhat disturbed that it's named "Bob," though.

An evil little yarn from artfibers.com:

Sanskrit.

I'd just like to note that I do not need this yarn. That fact does not, however, prevent me from lusting after it.

I quote:

After a bit of a hiatus, one of our semi-completed household projects has been brought to full completion. Last weekend, I asked Jeff to cut the remaining pieces of wood so that we could finish up our new CD rack, since our current plethora of CDs outgrew our old storage facility at least six months ago.Once he'd attached a back and a stabilizing base, all it needed was a coat of paint and we were good to go. I applied the paint yesterday afternoon and brought in the finished rack after dark. I set it up in the reading room and thought, "Oh dear.