Tuesday, January 2, 2007

Like wrestling an octopus!

Phew! I finished my little knitted cap today, and it looks fairly good, but what a struggle! I was going along fine till I had 7 inches done, and no problem with the first few decreases. Then I decided to transfer it to the double-pointed needles. Yikes! I got all tangled up trying to knit it off the circular needles and onto the dpn. And then as the size got smaller and smaller, it was very difficult to manage the three needles plus the working needle. I pushed on, afraid to stop lest I lose count of where I was entirely. But the stitches got loose at the joins of the needles. I ended it with 3-stitch i-cord at the top. (There were supposed to be an even number of stitches on the needles at all times, but I must have failed to k2tog somewhere along the way, because I had an odd number.) So it is a little holey (hole-y? holy??) at the top, but the decrease pattern looks more or less symmetrical and the knotted off umbilical-cord style flourish at the top is cute. Maybe a bit too cute for a person of my age, but what the heck.

Kristen got safely back to UCHicago today. We got up at 5 am, left the house at 5:30, and she took off at 8 am. She called me at 2 pm West Coast time (4 her time) to let me know she was back in her room. She took the bus from Midway to UChicago, which was strenuous, what with a laptop, a backpack, and a wobbly old suitcase. Note to self: new suitcase for birthday!! And that's the *good* one--the bad one is not only wobbly but is missing on foot that is supposed to hold it up-right. Time for new luggage, since she'll be doing quite a bit of traveling in the next few years.

I also took down all the Christmas decorations today. That is such a dreary job. The only pay-off is that the house looks kind of refreshingly bare and spacious. It also looks as dusty as hell, but driving to the airport and taking down the tree and lights was all the stress I could handle for one day, so I'll try to run the vacuum and remove a layer or two of dust tomorrow. Or some time. No promises!

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