(no subject)

Triple bonus day: it's supposed to rain off and on all day, New Boss is gone, and The Other Dave is gone. I have a few chores to do, and contractors to check in with should they decide to come out, and for the rest of the day, I brought knitting.

Dunno how much rain we got at home (really must put up that rain gauge one of these years), but the rain gauge here read 2.5", since 6am yesterday. A full inch of that fell yesterday afternoon, between 3:30 and 4pm, so one of my chores today is to drive the tree trail and see if the trail is eroded in any places.

By's off to help some friends move the last of their stuff to their new house today. Hopefully, the rain holds off while they're loading and unloading. He's been hard at work lately on various leather projects for people. A couple of those are due by Tara; one is due shortly thereafter.

What else? Got laid last night (twice), finished a book (The Flower War by Tad Williams), and ended the night being tired and hormonal. (Much thanks, btw, to those who put up with me last night. That was above and beyond the call of duty.)

That was more work that I'd intended to do today.

The down side to windy storms (liek the front that passed through yesterday afternoon) is that they bring down large tree branches, and I'm the poor schmuck who gets to clean that up. Today's prize: sycamore, 20' long, big end was 8" thick. Even after I cut the thing roughly into thirds, it was all I could do to get the "log" part of the branch into the truck. Ouch.

And we lost one of the new trees at the parking garage. The wind snapped the trunk, about 4' off the ground, right below the break where the same tree lost a major branch a few weeks ago. I cleaned up the broken top (this one was only 4" diam, and 15' long), and I ought to be trying to get the rest of the trunk and root ball out, but I just don't feel like messing with it by myself.

Stringish things

Cat, how adventurous do we feel? Was going through the Garnstudio Design pages, and found this for myself, and though that you might like this and this


Just one little problem: none of their really cool patterns are in English. They do have a knitting terms table elsewhere on their page, which is what makes the trapeze top that much more tempting. Many of their sweaters are simple shapes, so there's not that much to figure out, and they chart the stitch patterns (like on this lovely hat and glove set).


Edit: I kept paging through their site, and found this lovely page of accessories. Am very much tempted.

I need to check this site more new stuff more often, there's lots of new stuff since last I was here. **toddles off to continue string geeking**

Oh. My. Gods. (more string geeking)

For all of my string peeps who crochet, or just like antique needlework books, some very generous peole have scanned and put into pdf's a dozen or more, mostly crochet, mostly crochet lace books which date from 1847 to 1920. And they're available for download here.

Now I just need to find the right bribe, so that a certain someone will use his high-speed connection to procure them for me....

(no subject)

After a quick jaunt around campus(*), I don't feel so bad about having to clean up the fallen branches mess this morning. The cardboard recycling trailer (as in, semi-trailer, half-full of cardboard) over at the warehouse is laying on its side, on the ground, next to its supports. Which says that my trees actually fared rather well. And gee, at least I'm not the one who's got to clean *that* mess up.



*I was supposed to be meeting the tree service out here around noon, but found no sign of them. They must have figured it was too wet. Ah, well. More time to knit, or just goof off.

It's back

...raining again. For a while, at least. Radar looks like it may be spotty for a while yet, but we'll be getting more this evening.

Just sent the shop grunt home (with pay, of course--neither of us will tell how early he left). He'd already passed through all the stages of boredom, starting yesterday, from vacuuming vans, to cleaning the shop, towatching cartoons on the (tiny) black and white TV in the parts room, because it was on before a golf tournament, then to watching said golf tournament, then puttering online. And had finally settled down to twiddle his thumbs and maybe nap in the washbay. One of us has to be here, even though it's raining and the place is a ghost town, just in case. But only one of us.

Hey Cat!!!

We'd been talking about lace yarn for a project this fall, and I found this today. Merino laceweight, 1375 yds per 100g skein, sold by the bag, 10 balls per bag, $52.15 a bag. Down side is, only one color per bag. But damn, at that price, I'd buy white and dye the finished lace afterwards.

Shipping isn't too bad with these folks, $6.95 for the first bag, and $1.95 per bag afterwards.

(I've also been SERIOUSLY tempted by the sport-weight alpaca by Plymouth, on 1# cones. And lots of other things there. )