And this is why I need to update more often...

I have too many things to put in one post. Let's see if I can be brief:

1) The sweater is limping along. I realized I read a number wrong and the back should be 3" longer than I thought. Luckily, I realized this before binding off, but it's still a kick in the teeth. I'm not sure if it's good or bad that the only place I'm knitting it is in the bathroom. (People without toddlers: "Eeeeewwww!" People with toddlers: "Hey, what a great idea!") It helps with not trying to do too much anyway - my hands start to hurt somewhere between four and five rows, so there you go.

2) The baby blanket is being dragged kicking and screaming to completion. Much like pregnancy, I'm in the last couple of weeks and really wishing it were all over already. I'm a little scared of the border, I think, and that could be why I'm dragging my feet so much. On the upside, I've decided I do really like the lace I substituted for the outermost ring, and I'm glad I chose it. I'm down to the last 15 hours worth, anyway - go finish!

2b) I miscalculated. I actually need a third more yarn than I thought I did, and while I tried to deny it for as long as possible, I'm on the last ball and still have one repeat and the border to do. I bought 3 more, in a different dyelot, of course. I'm going to try alternating rows to mix it in, but it's hard to gauge when the rows are so very very long. (Let's see... one row is 1/12 a ball... now, thinking of it that way, the math isn't so bad at all. I guess I'll start doing it about 8 rows in? Sure.)

3) A friend of mine ran over his foot with the lawnmower this past weekend. They managed to save the toe, which is really good, and I'd like to knit him a pair of socks in celebration of that, but my husband thinks it'd be tacky to give a man in a foot-cast a pair of socks. (Well, he's not really in a cast and by the time I had the socks the bandages would be off, probably, but still.) I think I'll make the socks anyway. I'm sure they'll be received in the spirit given. (Pretty sure, anyway.) But I want - shock! horror! gasp! - sock yarn that doesn't self-stripe. And I may just put my own darn stripes in. (The overwhelming urge to knit complicated patterns on 0000 needles, we'll talk about another day.)