Spring!!

Well I guess spring is officially here. While most people are loving this weather, me not so much. The pollen is killing me. The yellow/green dust from all the pines covers everything. I'm a prisoner in my own home. By the time the pollen is mostly gone it'll be so hot I'll still be miserable. Between allergies and menopause I've really become more of a winter person. Fall has always been my favorite time of year anyway - now even more so.

Anyway, I'll do a week in review. I can only review the latest week because I can't remember enough to review the whole month and a half I've missed. Last week wasn't my best week. Oh it started off good - it just went in the toilet pretty quickly - and I mean that literally. I finally got a new iPhone on March 17. That piece of crap LG Voyager was really on its last leg. I was loving my new phone!! There's a few quirks that I'm not thrilled with but mostly I was in love with it. Monday I met Heidi and Morgan at Mom and Dad's so we could all go to lunch together. It was lovely! The weather was good (for most people, that means sweating while doing nothing for me), lunch (at Panera) was delicious and we had four generations together! That doesn't happen every day. When we got back to the house I just slipped my phone into my back pocket and grabbed my keys - left my purse in the car. Long story short, I went to the bathroom before leaving to come home and guess what? I forgot my phone was in my back pocket. When I went to pull my pants down that baby flipped right out and went swimming!! You have never seen anyone dive so fast into a toilet in your life! It was only in there a second - thank goodness it was clean water! (All of a sudden I really didn't even have to go anymore!) My heart sunk about as fast as my phone. Not pretty.

I dried it off and it appeared to be okay. I took a breath. I thought maybe I retrieved it fast enough. I didn't say a peep to anyone about what happened. Still hoping against hope it wasn't damaged I took it out to snap a picture of Morgan ... um, not good. The view was all cloudy. First major sign it didn't escape unharmed. I left not long after that and was constantly checking the phone to see if the camera was any better. I plugged it into the radio and it even played my tunes fine. I still had hope ... for a while. Until I picked it up and it was hot to the touch. Not a good sign. I didn't know if it would dry itself out or just continue to get worse. In the end, I decided to go by Best Buy and ask what they recommended. Thankfully, we purchased the Black Tie program and it was exchanged without a problem. I had to go back to my piece of crap phone for a few days but on Thursday morning I got the call saying my phone was in and I could come pick it up. That was a happy day.

Knitting
I am making my first wearable garment - well I guess that isn't actually true because I started a Kimono last spring. But a Kimono is a cardigan and it doesn't have to fit particularly well to be acceptable. I started a Miley-tee a couple of weeks ago. The yarn I'm using is Cascades Ultra Pima and it's a beautiful rich teal color. I love the sheen of this yarn. It's 100% cotton so it's not exactly forgiving to work with but I think it will be worth it. Anyway, Friday morning at S&B I was so excited to get to the point of putting the sleeves on a holder and just working in the round on the body. The sleeves and body of the top added up to nearly 400 stitches per round - it takes a while to complete a round. I had never been ecstatic with the way the "v" had come together when joined but figured there was some little finishing technique that would "improve" it. Well I broke one of the sacred rules when I started this top - I didn't read the pattern all the way through before casting on. As written, the "v" is fairly deep. Since I didn't want to have to wear something under the top, I decided to join it earlier than the pattern stated. Well, the instructions for joining were further down on the directions and I didn't "catch" it until about 3" past where I joined. I was sick. I knew ultimately I had to frog (rip out) all the way back to the join and do it again. Three inches may not sound like much but when you're looking at nearly 400 stitches per round ... well, let's just say it's a lot. Saturday morning I sucked it up and ripped it back. Challenging though it was I managed to get all the stitches back on a needle and have been playing catch up. I'm still not back to where was on Friday but I'll get there.

I also had to rip out some socks I was working on - quite a few times. Not a very productive week for knitting. But ... there's always the next week!! I finally got the Kimono I started last spring seamed on Monday. Karen came over to help me figure it out and between us we did. So yaaahh!! It isn't perfect but nothing I make is so that's ok. This was a learning experience and I didn't spend big bucks on the yarn for this project so if it ends up being a knock around the house sweater, that works for me. I still have to do 7" worth of garter stitch all around the front (lapel) so it's not done - but a whole lot closer than before!! It will be my auto-pilot project - except when it's too hot, which would be today. It's supposed to be almost 90 degrees today. I'm hibernating.

TTFN,
QB