The Lusty Month of May

Tra La!
(bonus points to you who know what that is from)

I'm back...well I have been back. I did start a blog post this past weekend when the darling computer shut down on me...losing everything. It didn't crash...just shut down. The CPU was overheating and apparently we have a failsafe...and apparently it doesn't include saving whatever you were doing at the time.

But to happy thoughts here is a beautiful Iris from my garden from the lot Woolybuns gave me last year. My tulips may have been a bust but these are just to die for.


May was a long and insane month. I was out of town the first three weekends, and when I wasn't out of town I was at work. The trips were my best friends bridal shower/bachorlette party, my dad's retirement party, and wedding of my love's highschool buddy. The month was filled with the good (seeing friends and family, a riotous live performance of the Full Monty, a huge knitting sale, bartending for drunken firemen, meeting my friends daughter for the first time, reading several books, boat loads of knitting, and lots of time with my love) and the bad (lots of rude, obnoxious screaming customers, driving, grandma in the hospital, shattered hopes of a pregnancy, exhaustion, driving, an unwanted job offer that set my life off kilter for a bit, and more driving).

It did inclue a bit of knitting though:

• I finished the 'm' bag
• I started and finished a 'j' bag (this was started monday night and the zipper was installed in the car on that very say friday...felting and all).
• 3 pedicure socks.

Right now I am in a bout of knitting monogomy...the shawl for my best friend's wedding gift. The wedding is July 16th. It is a Fiddlesticks pattern with 9, count them 9 charts. I'm not exactly a chart knitter but I am turning into one. The gauge swatch was a bit of a trial. I knit it with the suggested yarn on the suggested size needles....stitch count too small, row count too big. WTF!!!!! ok.....jump two needle sizes....stitch count too big, row count too big (actually the same as the other swatch) Again WTF! So I went to the size in between the two. I didn't swatch again. I figured that was the close as I was going to get and I am not getting out the micrometer to make in between size needles. Its a shawl, not a bra...I do have some leeway. This is how it looks halfway through chart 2. Notice the lovely lilac life line. I may be crazy but I'm not stupid. (photo loads but doesn't show. See my invisible shawl)

So that's a quick and dirty update.