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I've got a new puzzle going this week. The Star Wars Comics puzzle I was working on the other weekend is glued and framed, and that's the plan for this one too. I do have two more puzzles in the queue, but so far I'm just planning on solving them and then dropping them off at the thrift store-I don't have nearly enough wall space to frame and keep every puzzle I buy!

I haven't had too much knitting time since this weekend, but I'm still making slow, slow progress on my TPCT. It's supposed to finally get up into the mid-to-upper-nineties in a couple days, and I am not ready for it at all. There is nothing about near hundred-degree weather that I like, and since this weekend is the Shakespeare Festival, I'm going to be sitting outside every evening. I'd been hoping to crank out more of this, but since it's going to be too hot, I might have to just bring a sock so I don't have to sit with a lap full of wool.

(Since it's Wednesday, I'll also mention that I'm currently reading Preacher: Book 3 and Lady Killer. Yes, they are both exceptionally violent, and loads of fun. No worries, I feel a poetry kick coming soon, so once I'm done with the Preacher series I'll get back to some wholesome literature.)

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Sisters and Socks

Look! A wild pair of socks in their natural habitat! The weekend was a total success, both in terms of sister time and sock knitting. Friday night karaoke was a ton of fun. Most of the university students are gone for the summer, so the town is nice and quiet and there was only a dozen or so people at the bar for karaoke. It was pretty laid back, and pretty much everyone got to do two or three songs.

The rest of the weekend was a mix of thrifting, book shopping, movies, and vegging out. I worked on the leg of my neon sock at karaoke, and the rest of the time I trucked through these plain socks I'd been working on for my mum. I cast these on back in December, but they've been languishing for the most part since then, cast aside in favor of larger projects.

I am very happy to be done with these, and I'm really glad to have reconnected with sock knitting. I do love my shawls and sweaters and cowls, but there's something so comfortable about banging out a pair of socks. It's one of my goals this year to get back into regular sock knitting, and I think this is a good step forward.

Ravelry Page: mum socks

Pattern: sock recipe in my head

Yarn: Premier Yarns Deborah Norville Serenity Sock Weight Prints "Aquamarine"

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Fun and Socks

Normally, I don't plan too much for my weekends. Some Netflix, lots of knitting, chores. I'm a pretty low-key gal. But I've actually got some fun plans brewing for this weekend, and I think we'll probably come up with more before I get done with work today. Anemone's coming to visit this weekend, and initially we were planning on just hanging out and marathoning Harry Potter.

Then I remembered there's karaoke on Friday nights. So, okay, we'll do karaoke. Then, since the Shakespeare Festival is next weekend, the town's doing a bit of a gear-up week, and the classic cinema downtown is doing a free showing of Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing on Saturday morning. So, we have to  go to that. The rest of the weekend is so far dedicated to watching the extended Lord of the Rings trilogy, but there's still room in  there for other fun things to pop up.

Since I've been feeling the urge to knit socks this week, I'm going with it. I'll bring a sock to the bar to work on during karaoke. Socks are also dedicated cinema knitting, and since we'll be at the cinema on Saturday morning, I'll have to bring a plain sock. My TPCT is probably only about half done now, and I'm sure I can crank out most of the rest of the body at least while watching LOTR, but I'll change it up by swapping between that and one of my patterned sock projects.

Drifting

I'm feeling a bit...adrift, right now, in terms of blogging. I'm juggling a whole lot of different projects, and I certainly have no shortage of things to blog about, but I'm starting to feel a bit jarred by how quickly I flit from thing to thing. I've always been flighty like this, and from the very first day I learned how to knit, I knew I was going to have to juggle several projects to avoid getting bored.

So what's my focus this week? I finished up the sample for my new cowl design, and it's blocking now and I'm getting the pattern written up. Having not done any pattern writing since winter, it feels really good to have this one almost ready. I took the whole spring off of design work, giving myself a rest and trying to focus on what it is I want to be doing and what I want to be making, and I'm definitely feeling better for having taken that break. I'm slowly but surely making my way through the body of my Finn cardigan sample as well, and trying to finish up my TPCT before I get too deeply wrapped up in the OAL.

Surprisingly, I've also been feeling pulled back towards sock knitting. I was a really big sock knitter in college, when I had 21 hours of class each week, and small projects were easy to carry around to class, but I've knit fewer and fewer pairs over the past few years. Lately though, I've been drawn towards fun sock yarns, and I've been feeling like maybe it's sock time. Goodness knows, out of the four pairs I have on the needles currently, it probably wouldn't hurt to pick one or two back up.

Also, because apparently I can't hold myself accountable to anything unless I blog about it, I went on a 10.5 mile training ride last night. My bum is still not thrilled with me, but it's coming around. Continued thanks and love to everyone who has either donated or cheered me on (or both!)-you guys are my blog family, and I couldn't do this without you.

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Weekending

It's a long weekend in the US, so I've been spending mine in my favorite ways. I finished a jigsaw puzzle on Saturday, read volumes 18-22 of Fables and Milk and Honey (which is so amazing, oh my gosh), and have done a whole lot of knitting. I pulled out this cowl design that I started a couple of months ago, and I've made some good progress on it. It's well over halfway done now, and I'm absolutely thrilled with how it's knitting up.

I've also been juggling a few other projects this weekend-I finally divided the sleeves on my TPCT, and while it will probably take a miracle for me to be done by the end of the KAL on Friday, I'm still enjoying it and I've got several outfit ideas for it planned already.

I also went on my first training ride in weeks yesterday. There's less than six weeks until the Tour de Cure, which is really lighting a fire under my ass. I got 9.7 miles done, and the ride was easier than I expected, which was a nice feeling. I'm hoping to get a lot of these short rides in over the next few weeks, and get a couple of longer rides in before the Tour date. I can't adequately express how much I appreciate everyone's support so far, and I'm looking forward to the next six weeks of training.

Big Changes, and Yoga Shawl Yarn

If you recall, when I was at my knitting retreat last month I dyed up four skeins for a special project that I wasn't able to tell you about at the time. Well, now the cat's out of the bag-if you follow me on Twitter or Instagram you already may know this, but I started a new job on Monday as the Borrowing Supervisor for Inter-Library Loan at the university I've been a secretary at for the past three years. I'm super excited about this change, and I'm loving my new job so far. I've been trying for years to get back into library work, and it feels so good to be back doing what I love.

I used to complain about the HVAC in my office a lot-and the library is notoriously even worse, so as soon as I accepted this job I knew I was going to need a dedicated library wrap to keep at my desk for chilly days. My mind immediately went to the Yoga Shawl-I loved this pattern when it came out, but I didn't feel like it was something I'd wear a lot as an accessory. However, it's totally the kind of thing that I'll snuggle up in at my desk!

My plan was to start knitting this week, but after I wound the yarn into cakes I noticed that my hands were red. And the card table was red. And when I went to rinse my hands, I splashed my front and got red splotches on my shirt. There was a lot of dye to clean up-not surprising, given that this is such a rich and dark red, but it was really tough to clean up. I had to bleach the card table, my shirt was a total loss (it was a $1 tank top, so no biggie), and I really don't want to go through all that again to re-skein the yarn to try and set the dye more, but I also don't want to get dye everywhere while knitting. So do I cast on fearlessly, and only knit while wearing dark clothes? Or do I suck it up and re-skein the yarn and hope I can get the dye to set better? Or is there another idea that's evading me so far? 

FO: Make Up Your Mind

 Hark! A finished tank! This was my original project for the Very Shannon TTTKAL, and after my brief affair with the Tallahassee Crop Top, it pretty much flew off the needles. I alternated two skeins of Colinette Jitterbug, but I still have 134g (almost half the yarn!) left over (oh well, I guess I'll have to knit a pink crop top, woe is me). I knit this pretty much as written-I did fudge some length  in the upper fronts/back so the armholes and neckline wouldn't be too deep, but otherwise I didn't mess around with it.

I'm so glad to have finally gotten around to this top-I've had it in my queue for years. I had just a little trouble with two of the stitch patterns-the linen rib and Hindu pillar stitch were a bit fiddly for my taste, but fortunately that made me power through them to get to something I enjoyed more, so it all worked out okay. Ultimately I love the stitches in this top, so I'm glad I powered through them and didn't try to sub out for something else.

Ravelry Page: Make Up Your Mind

Pattern: Make Up Your Mind by knittedblissJC

Yarn: Colinette Jitterbug, "Madder"

Linking up with Yarn Along

We Went to the Zoo!

About a month ago I texted Anemone to see if she'd be interested in a zoo day. I love zoos and aquariums, and I feel pretty fortunate that I've got a zoo just an hour away. Saturday was the designated day, so I drove up to the city first thing in the morning and we went to see all the animals!

Giraffes

Kookaburra

Gibbon

Kangaroo

Goats

Camel

Macaques

It was so great to get to hang out all day with my sister and walk around the entire zoo. We got some good sister time in, I got to pet some sheep and goats (the zoo has a farm animal petting zoo inside!), we ate delicious Mexican food, and we spent way too much time in the gift shop afterwards :) 

FO: Tallahassee Crop Top

Guys, this project was so quick, I can barely believe it! I suppose that's to be expected with a cropped tank, but sheesh! If you recall, I had this yarn left over from my Cam Tee sample last summer, and I'd hoped to make a crop top with it, but hadn't identified a pattern. When Tallahassee came out earlier this year, I knew it would be perfect for this orange, and I think I was right!

I'd been planning on saving this top for a mid-summer project, but then I found this skirt at one of the thrift stores in town and the oranges match perfectly-plus, how often do you find the perfect high-waist maxi skirt? Less than a week later, I had a finished crop top, and I'm just as pleased as punch. I love this outfit, and I have at least two more skirts that this top will go great with.

I did make a couple of mods on this. Most obviously, it's cropped, and I added two more sets of waist decreases before knitting the bottom ribbing. For the straps, I knew I wanted wider straps than the pattern called for, so the top would be a bit less risque for work, so I picked up the stitches as written, but instead of doing straight ribbing, I knit eleven rounds first. There are some stitches that are kept live and picked up straight from the ribbed neckband-I did keep those as ribbed, so I have this cool epaulet-type texture on the tops of the shoulders.

Ravelry Page: Tallahassee Crop Top

Pattern: Tallahassee, by Kristen TenDyke 

Yarn: Knit Picks Shine Sport, "Grapefruit"

More KALing

I'm wearing my new crop top today, and I promise to have FO pictures for you all on Friday. I decided to count that top as a second TTTKAL project, and now I'm well back to work on my Make Up Your Mind and my TPCT.

Both of these projects are almost at good milestones-TPCT is just a couple of rounds away from dividing for the sleeves, and Make Up Your Mind is just a scant inch away from dividing the front and back. I feel like I'm in pretty good shape for both KALs, and I'm really excited with how may awesome new summer tops I'm coming out with.

I'm working on some crafting plans for the summer right now. I'm really tempted to do the OAL with Lladybird and Untangling Knots this year-for a couple of reasons, my summer is going to be less busy than it has been in the past, and community theatre rehearsals won't start until the last week of June, so I should be able to finally swing it! I'd also like to finally get some sewing done, and another summer top or two knit up.

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