in which the day progresses

I know y'all want a knitting update.

I'm making a scarf for my friend's birthday, which was last week. She's a crafter herself and understands that things aren't always able to be done by the day you hope. I had some yarn in a color I knew she'd like, and it was enough for a pair of socks or a lacy scarf. I asked her which she prefered, hoping she'd say socks but she elected a
scarf. Sigh. Making socks is so much more fun. I like handknitted scarves, but I like them when they are done. With scarves, I like the product, not the process. Socks, sweaters, hats, blankets...I like the process too. Ok, I should qualify that bit about blankets. I've never knitted a complete blanket and so far I've only completed about a foot of the Mitered Square (which is really a rhombus) blanket that I'm making out of (mostly) leftover yarn. Most of the squares (rhombi) are 31 stitches across, which makes them about 3" (about 15cm) in diameter, but just for the heck of it, I made a few squares (rhombi) 61 stitches across. Some of the yarn is self-patterning, and I thought it would like nice for a large square (rhombus) to show off the pattern. But part of the fun of making these mitered squares (rhombi)
is that they were fairly small and therefore, making a single one is rather quick. But making the bigger one just seemed like so much more work and it took me awhile to remember back to 9th grade geometry and realize that when you double the side of regular parallelogram, the area is increased exponentially. So a square (rhombus) that starts out as 61 stitches is four times the size of one that starts out as 31 stitches. So I think I will stick with the 31 stitch square (rhombus). More fun that way. Of course, I could stop now and have a really funky scarf.

The only good thing about Mouse and Lady Grey going back to the Humane Society is that my knitting is safe now. They were quite the pair, between MOuse constantly running off with my yarn and Lady Grey chewing on my knitting notions. I hope I never need to measure anything longer than 11.5 inches because Lady Grey chewed up the last half inch of my ruler. (Wait, I have to revise that. Really, the only good thing about them going back to the Humane Society is that they are on their way to getting a [hopefully] forever home.)

Did I mention the approximately 40 lbs of library books I was hauling this morning? I managed to stuff a good deal of them into my backpack. (You will not believe how many books I can pack into my backpack. This is the single most useful thing I learned in graduate school. Not nearly as cool as learning Old Icelandic but far more useful.) As I opened the door to my office building, I noticed one of my lunch containers on the ground. Apparently, my backpack's zipper had come undone and not really thinking (remember, I didn't get any sleep last night), I bent over to pick it up. Yes, with the open backpack full of really heavy books still on my back. Not used to this new center of gravity, I lost my balance and toppled forward into the door, spilling most of the contents all over the ground. This was really not a problem except that this little feat was witnessed by about five of my colleagues, and I was, shall we say, really embarrassed.