Ravelry!

I finally received my invitation to Ravelry last Thursday and promptly spent the entirety of my Clinical Research as well as my Stats class exploring and adding projects. It's addictive, and wonderful--just what a knitter/crocheter wants and needs. Instead of googling for hours before starting a new project I can just click on the projects already added, and drool over finished versions from around the world. It's exactly the internet-knitting tool that I've been dreaming of. <3.

Cherie Amour Progress

After some car-ride knitting on the way to and from NYC/NJ this weekend, my Cherie Amour has progressed nicely up to the armpits (it's a quick knit--size 13s will do that for ya!)
The pattern is great no-brainer knitting for the most part, though the variegated dark yarn made it surprisingly hard to see the lace pattern clearly, thus making it strangely more tricky for my mind to process the pattern. I'm making the size XS and it seems to be fitting so far--the acrylic yarn is SUPER stretchy and cozy, but unfortunately has very little element of drape--I might crochet a beaded edging along the bottom hem just to give it some weight, but we'll see how it sits once finished. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the pooling of colors in the bottom area yet--I think I like it, but again, that'll really be determined by the finished piece. It's not as if I'd frog (uh, not too worried about salvaging the mill end yarn!) and re-knit the piece unless it is grossly non-proportional, so it's a bit of a moot point.
Please excuse the flashy cat-assisted photo, but it's about all I can do to take an occasional decent photo of a coveted FO, much less a not-even-half-finished WIP. This was actually the kitten on better behavior. After the photo was taken she tried to chew on first the yarn, then my Denise needle cords. They are squishy I guess, but you better believe I put a quick end to THAT nonsense. I love those damn things.
Oh, in other news--I finished seaming up the Tigger Baby Sweater and brought it up to be passed on to the recipient, a little Chinese girl recently adopted by one of the boy's cousins. Of course I forgot to take a picture before giving it away so I'll have to hope for an action shot on the cute baby herself.

Current WIPs

#1) Grey Lacey Tubey: Progressing slowly but surely through the sleeve/back portion. While I believe that I've got the apparently-critical armpit-to-armpit back measurement correct, I live in constant fear that bunchiness will occur once the body is picked up.

#2) I've been a bad bad girl and couldn't resist swatching for and subequently casting on for Cherie Amour from the Fall Knitty. It's progressing along rather quickly, so I don't feel quite as guilty about starting a second pullover project while the first is still on sleeve island.

In other news, a knitty surprise has come up--while it kind of creeps me out it strikes me as rather clever as well. If I made it I'd almost certainly leave the skellington-mouth off to prevent people clubbing me as a would-be (albeit knit-handy) mugger.

In other other news, I received my holiday vogue knitting today and I am completely unenthused about any of the patterns or features. Given my recent greedy pattern reading and restrained-with-difficulty startitis, this is somewhat of a feat, but that's what you get when half of your patterns make even the lovely models look like squat toadstools and the other half of the patterns are completely unwearable. Sigh.

Zen and the art of gardening in a drought

It would be only natural that the year I started gardening would be a year of record drought here in central north carolina. The area lakes are all drying up, lawns are crispier than...rice krispies, and we're all on mandatory water restrictions.
Even before the drought, however, I've noticed that gardening has made me a more mindful person--more conscious of my actions, what I eat, what I buy. In a way, gardening has changed my life. It has made me appreciate the difference between good and bad produce on a completely different level. Before I ate a homegrown tomato ripened on the vine I didn't care to eat tomatoes at all--only being familiar with the bland styrofoam-like imitations on store shelves. I knew nothing of the joys of freshly picked lettuce, eating a sugar snap pea off the vine, even fresh herbs.
Or, of the warm little touch of pride when serving something made with veggies you grew yourself. That "do it yourself" attitude has spread itself to other aspects of my eating--making homemade pickles, curing salmon (both of which were delicious, BTW).
And then there's the whole turning into one of those "granola" people...planning a grey-water recycling system to water the garden (my ersatz grey water system right now consists of using dishwater to water my plants), concocting homemade pesticides (neem oil, hot sauce, and liquid soap), shopping at the farmer's market. I'm even going to finally start composting!
Gardening has opened up a whole new world of thinking for me. Mmm. I think I'm in the mood for some pickles.