Luna Moth - 2nd Repeat

I've made more progress since my last Luna post, and I think I can make out the pattern now. Slow but somewhat steady progress. Gosh, I hope I'm not going to be the last one to finish a shawl for the Elann Shawl KAL! So many people have already finished their shawl, go to the blog and check it out.

The second repeat was much easier to work despite having more stitches on the needle. There's a certain soothing rhythm to the pattern. I do love the respite of purling wrong side rows. And Ive figured out that I absolutely must count my stitches after working each row. I usually have the correct number of stitches when I count them, so not much tinking back involved. However if I get a little over confident about my knitting and decide not to count my stitches, then I will invariably run into a problem working the next row due to not starting with the correct number of stitches. Must be a knitter's Murphy's Law.

Before starting the 2nd repeat, I had some concerns about knowing how many times to do the "repeat" sections of each right side row, but it all fell into place as I worked it. Shui Kuen Kozinski is a great designer and her pattern is well written. So if there are any wrinkles in my shawl, it would be a case of PEBKNAC.

PEBKNAC???

Problem Exists Between Knitting Needles And Chair. It's a variation of the geeky acronym PEBKAC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair).

I really love this color, it's Highland Wool in Red Maple. Of course the photo above doesn't really show its true color. I think I'm leaning towards reds right now because I seem to be knitting with too many greens which seems odd to me since I'm not a big green person. So why do I have so much yarn in various shades of green? Hmmm...

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M, my Mom, and I were at the mall one day. I left them by a small fountain with koi & turtles (M loves to look at them) while I stopped by the Disney Store (cuz it is usually not a good idea to enter that store with M) and found a little something for her. I came back with the bag which M spotted immediately. She wanted to get her hands on the bag and take a lookie. All she did was open the bag slightly, saw something like what you see above (except that she didn't open the bag that wide when she did it), and immediately said, "Pooh bear!" I hope she identified Pooh bear by color and not by his bottom! LOL. She didn't actually take him out of the bag. She was content in holding the bag... which also meant dragging it on the floor cuz she couldn't hold it high enough to clear it. She has a thing for holding bags, but I also like to think that she's just trying to help Mommy. :-) Can't tell you how many bags we have with "floor burns" on them...

I thought I got a great deal though. This is a giant Pooh bear, regularly priced at $24.50, marked down to $19.99. I got it for $10 with an additional 50% off. Pretty cool even if he's been dragged around, stepped on, and who knows what else while he was in the store. I'm gonna throw him in the washer before I give him to M. The regular size Pooh Bear has survived the washer (placed in a pillow case first), so I'm assuming this one will survive it too. The tags don't say whether you can wash it; it doesn't even say the surface wash only. I think all kids stuff should be machine washable. I mean, what do you think will happen with toys? Like they never get stuffed into mouths, dragged around who knows where, or pawed at with sticky hands. Besides sticky hands, M is a walking crumb dropping machine. We've been house hunting lately, and as much as I like hard wood floors, sometimes I think our entire house should have lino/vinyl floors until M is old enough to keep messes contained in small sections of the house.

Anyhowz... fortunately for me, by the time we go home, she had already forgotten that we picked up that giant Pooh Bear .... :-)

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I've been meaning to follow up on my biopsy & ultrasound results. I've just been so busy with other things and I keep forgetting to call my doc. It usually crosses my mind after business hours. Of course my doc could call me, so I suppose no news must be good news...

Well, I finally finished watching Pride & Prejudice (Keira Knightley) and have to say I did not enjoy it as much as I was hoping. It was so disappointing that I didn't even watch the special features on the DVD. I will go back to my favorite version of Pride & Prejudice (Colin Firth, Jennifer Ehle) which I can watch countless times without ever getting bored of it. DH always makes a comment about Darcy having the the same or only one expression on his face. Ah well, Jane Austen really isn't his thing. I guess it really isn't a "guy" thing to watch.

I was watching disc 4 of Firefly and paid close attention to Jayne's hat in the episode "The Message". I was thinking of knitting up the hat that Jayne wore in that episode; it's a hat he receives from his Mom, and he wears it throughout the episode. It would be a gift for a Firefly fan; who else would be interested in such a hat? LOL. While trying to get a better look at the hat, I discovered how to pause and zoom with the DVD remote. :-) Of course this didn't really help me see the hat considerably better. Although a bulky/chunky weight yarn will probably knit up quickly, I will probably do it with worsted weight yarn since I'm just so much more comfortable working with that for hats. Plus I don't have pairs of large circular needles in the same size, which would preclude making a bulky/chunky hat (since I use the 2-circ method). Now it's just a matter of finding the right shades of red, orange, and yellow. Yep, those are the colors of the hat. The hat is not much to look at, so I will just leave you with this quote from the episode:

Wash: "A man walks down the street in that hat, people know he's not afraid of anything." Jayne: "Damn straight."


I am in desperate need of a hair cut. Hair cuts are a Monday morning thing cuz I can usually get in without having to wait long. Of course going to get my hair cut depends on whether I can get up early enough and whether DH's morning is clear of any meetings (so he can watch M while I get my hair cut). I missed this past Monday because DH had a 2-day managerial off-site on Mon & Tues and was out the door before I even got up so he could make it to the meeting at Hotel Los Gatos in Los Gatos, CA.

We'll be getting up way early in the morning tomorrow to meet with our Realtor to look at a few more houses. What fun it will be driving to the south bay in rush hour traffic. The last time we did this (also to meet with the Realtor), I was convinced that Eric was correct about the 380 connector between 280 and 101 being a death trap as I attempted to change into the right lanes that would get me onto 101 while trying to avoid getting side-swiped by the crazy commuters and the gargantuan psycho Marin airporter coach who was also vying for the same lanes. Lane changes are definitely not my forte. I can't do it unless I have a 15 km buffer between the two cars where I'm trying to insert myself into. So lane changes are quite stressful for me when there's barely one car length of space for me to squeeze myself into.

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