Monotonous

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I feel like I'm always knitting with the same old colors. They tend to purples, blues, pinks, and greens. As I went stash diving, all I could see were purples, blues, pinks, and greens. Boring. Boring. Boring!!! I am especially sick of green. I don't know why I seem to have so much green yarn or why I seem to knit a lot of green. I wanted to knit with something new. Well yes, there are a few other colors in my stash, some reds, and I don't know what else. I dug a little deeper and pulled out this:

Elann Highland Wool

It's Elann Highland Wool in some sort of light peachy or cantaloupe color. It's not really my color, but I'm sure it is somebody's color. So what I am knitting will definitely not be for me.

Then DH comes home and presents me with a tote bag. Don't get excited, it's just one of those freebie things his company gave out to celebrate their new company logo and slogan. So what will I do with this bag? In goes the peachy Highland Wool and the piece of paper with my pattern scribbles. All I need to do is hunt down a 4.5 mm needle. You'd think this would be easy since I just finished Beaumonde using that size needle. Nope, it couldn't be that easy. It's not in my circular needle storage. Where is could it have gone??? The tote is small, but it's a bit large for small projects. That won't stop me from using it as yet another WIP project bag. Please don't ask me how many WIP project bags I have roaming around the house. I've lost count, and some I haven't seen since before we moved into the new house.

Mom's vest

Very little progress on Mom's vest. I have finished the Back and Left Front sections. And I have mapped out how I will work the Right Front section, which needs to be a mirror image of the Left Front section. That's what the instructions tell you to do, but I really need it written out in more detail, so I have written out the shaping section like I did for the Left Front section. Now it's just a matter of working up to casting on for the Right Front section. I wish there was some sort of xerox machine for knitting that would make a copy of the Left Front section. Oh, this machine would also have to have a special button that would automagically reverse the shaping too.

Elann Luxury Merino Superwash

I picked up more of my favorite superwash yarn, Elann Luxury Merino Superwash, a DK weight yarn. The ball on the left is Cafe Au Lait, the ball on the right is Merlot. When I first dropped them into my shopping cart, I was thinking of using each color individually. However after I received them and had both balls next to each other, I started to think they would make a good pairing. What do you think? Ok, maybe I'm smoking crack.

This yarn feels so soft in my hands whenever I work with it. It is very noticeable when I work with some other yarn and then come back to this one. I hope Elann has no plans to discontinue this yarn, it is definitely a keeper. This is my favorite superwash wool, perfect for making gifts for machine wash friends and family.

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Painting by DH's uncle

After 8 months in the new house, I have finally thought about hanging pictures. I dug out this one which was painted by my MIL's sister's husband and hung it up in the family room. It's not a very large one so I thought it would be best up above the fireplace (you can see a photo of it here). Unfortunately, I couldn't reach up high enough to stick a nail in the existing hole on the wall. Instead, I got up on the sofa which is sitting along that wall on the right side and stuck a nail in one of the existing holes in the wall. I wasn't quite ready to hammer in a new hole along that wall. The painting is definitely too small for that wall, but I'll leave it there for now until DH can find a ladder to hang it up over the fireplace. The frame is 57 cm x 46.5 cm (~ 22 in x 18 in).

Miss M's birthday card

My MIL's sister was excited to find this large birthday card for Miss M. It's really quite large, it's like laying out 4 regular size cards in a 2 x 2 configuration. It's 34.5 cm x 26 cm (~ 13.5 in x 10.5 in).

Painted by DH's uncle

And she was happy to find blank space on the inside so that her husband could paint inside. They wrote a message on the right side, and next to each Chinese character they have also included the pronunciation guide that Chinese grade schoolers learn (bo po mo fo). Who knows, perhaps Miss M will someday learn it. (BTW, my Mandarin learning has come to a halt as I wait for CD set 2A to become available at the library; it was due on 6 April 2008, and it still hasn't been returned yet).

After 6 months in the new house, we managed to unpack the 2-burner griddle and have been making pancakes since then. Miss M loves pancakes, however I suspect it has more to do with the maple syrup than the actual pancake.

After 8 months in the new house, the original camera doohickey and Sims Makin Magic disc #1 still haven't resurfaced.

There's life outside in our backyard again. Our peach tree is no longer just bare branches. Our orange tree has these little white flowers on them and they're quite fragrant. The downside to this are the ginormous buzzing insects around the tree and in the back yard. I normally think of bees as black and yellow, but there are some pure black ones out there. The bug life out there is pretty healthy (read: huge). I've seen a hummingbird out there. I'm thinking of getting a feeder, but I have no idea where I'd put it or whether I'd get eaten alive by the bug life when I attempt to put it up.

There's also a family of small birds living in a nest under the overhanging roof just outside our kitchen window. I can sometimes see a head when I look up through the kitchen window. I think they chose to move into the nest there (it was there before we bought the house) because it kept them dry and safe from the fluffy dark brown cat that roams around. This cat manages to climb up onto our roof!

Sadly, those mysterious "pinpoint" bugs have reappeared in our hallway bathroom again; it was nice when they disappeared during the winter. There is a door from the hallway bathroom leading out to the back yard. I'm pretty sure that's where the bugs are coming in from. I still haven't identified what sort of bug they are. I sometimes see them roaming around outside, I sometimes notice them when I'm sweeping the patio. They're smaller than ants and about the size of or smaller than a flea, a size that my non-bug-phobic DH would not notice. And when you try to squash them, they jump! I tried to do a search on insects and so far I think the they might be springtails, however I can't be 100% sure. Other insect life have started to show interest in our house again. I have see more variety and quantity of bug life at the new house since we moved in last Sept than all the bug life I had seen at the old house during the previous decades! I guess that was one nice thing about living in the city.

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Oh, I discovered something about Ravelry. Well, it's something I had known before but somehow forgot about. When you mark a project as being completed by month/year, it isn't actually a "finished" project until you use the drop down menu to change "in progress" to "finished". I must have known this before because I had a bunch of projects marked as "finished". It wasn't until recently that I noticed I had a bunch of finished projects that were still marked as "in progress" because all I did was add the month/year it was completed without using that drop down menu to mark it as "finished". So I spent a little time to fix some of my finished projects. It's so easy to miss these little details...

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My hands and wrists are feeling a bit better now that I have been laying off the computer use quite a bit and wearing a wrist brace. I think most of the pain is from mouse clicking. My keyboard is still configured for Dvorak, and I have considered changing it back to Qwerty to force myself to type slower. I'm also taking it easy on the knitting too.
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