I'm still here

I just haven't had the energy to do much blogging as my work schedule has been pretty draining the last couple of weeks. Thanks for your very nice emails checking in on me my friends, I sure appreciate it.

On the knitting front I finished the knitting of Branching Out about two weeks ago. I decided to try to block this myself, it's currently soaking in cold water in the washing machine. One of my friends from my Knit Night, waving at Billie, told me how to go about this. I'm very nervous about this so wish me luck.

I hope to finish my second Herringbone Rib Scarf from Li tonight and wear it this week and block it over next weekend.

Moving on to how I've been harassing MFB over the last month or so and how it lead to a .....well you'll see.

I've been none to subtle around home about wanting an MP3 player for a trip I'm taking to Arizona in less than two weeks. When I saw Carrie's post where she briefly mentioned a GPS that also has a MP3 player and I believe it also works with a blue tooth I thought hmmmm, portable GPS w/MP3 player - SAWEET. On our recent adventure in Delaware my harassment started to include the GPS. I've even enlisted friends to amp up the harassment. Conversations such as "If you were to buy a GPS any idea what brand you might get" or an email from friends in Canada "We just bought a Gold Wing but we decided to get one without a stereo because we thought we'd get a GPS and a MP3 player, any idea how much they are down in states?" these two instances in particular were priceless. Then during the Super Bowl there was a commercial where a guy is opening a road map which explodes in the car and I say "that wouldn't happen with a GPS" unbeknownst to me that it was a commercial for the exact GPS unit. He's been a good sport for the most part about all this - his usual retort is to send me an email linking to a Volvo he wants which has a GPS built in. I think a portable one makes more sense - for when MFB abandons me on the side of the road rental cars or traveling with friends who don't have a GPS.

What all this lead up to is this:

On the last home game of the Penn State Icers that I am able to attend this year - last Saturday- I decided to pick up a program for a souvenir of the season. In three programs that are given out there are "stuffers", if you will, saying the program holder gets to go down to center ice during the 2nd intermission to take part in a shooting competition to win a gift certificate. (You can see this coming can't you?) I open my program and I'm one of the lucky recipients. I immediately start looking for a kid who would get a charge out of the opportunity. As I'm looking around the biggest kid I see is MFB and I think of the charge he's going to get out of not letting me forget that I embarrassed myself in front of 1600 people - at least 40 of whom we know. I figure I owe him.

About 5 minutes before his broadcast of the game starts I show him the stuffer and I thought he'd fall over from laughing. He asks, "So, do you shoot right or left?". My retort, "like I would know". I ask him how do I shoot a puck and he says "right hand lower on the stick than the left and as you go through the puck turn your wrist over kind of like a golf shot". OK I think, I play golf, badly, but I play it. He says "try to at least get the puck to the goal line". Yes I know, I asked for that.

I didn't tell anyone else about it before hand. Why ruin the surprise - not him he sent an IM over to the arena announcer (a friend) giving him the heads up. Wanted to give him time to pick out the perfect music for me I guess, how thoughtful. Here's how it went:

They give each person two tries to shoot the puck from center ice down to the net where they have restricted the net to a small slot probably 8"x3" and the puck has to go through there. So I, in my tennis shoes step off the carpet at center ice, I know what you're thinking, and take a nice big back swing like in golf and hit a plastic bin that was sitting on the ice and that made me "whiff" the puck. It went about 3 yards at the most - kind of like some of my golf shots. All I could think of was "try to at least get to the goal line". On my second shot the puck made it down to about the goal line but it was "wide right". I know you were thinking I'd slip and fall but I didn't. Believe me the thought crossed my mind. Later he tells me it works better to wrist the shot rather than take a slap shot. Come to think of it, he hasn't really teased me much about it. As I say he's a pretty good sport.

Almost forgot. At my LYS Super Bowl Sunday sale I picked up a skein of Mountain Colors Twizzle in the Thunderhead colorway. I've been looking at this for several months but couldn't convince myself to get it until now. Why? 40% off!

Home Again

Thanks so much to everyone for leaving advice on my lace problem from my last post. This is a terrific community of knitters who are so helpful. When I first started here, I had no idea. You all are very much appreciated. I decided to rip the lace out and start over and over, and over, and over again. It looks better, finally. My center stitch does go a little wonky (that's my technical term for it), but it makes sense to me that it has to. With ripping it out a dozen times a couple times, I now understand how I need to count to ensure I have the right number of stitches.

Fluffbuff had this post where she described how she is working on her first lace project and put the instruction of each row on a card. What a fantastic idea. I probably did mine a little differently as I did the old fashioned cut and paste - scissors and tape. This helped me track the stitches and all of a sudden the knitting went, dare I say, smoothly. I was even able to participate in conversations, when knitting, on our trip to Scranton PA and Newark DE .

The trip was to watch our Penn State Icers play some hockey. I didn't make it to the game in Westchester PA as that was the middle of the week. They lost that game in a shootout, but it was a team they should not have lost to. They won both their games that I attended and the second game in Newark was the best I've seen them play this year. For those of you who only hear "WAH WAH WAH" when I go on about hockey here is a picture of some little tykes who played during the intermission in Newark. Even though they're from Delaware the Penn State fans in attendance gave them a standing ovation. Too cute.

I had a small stash enhancement on this trip. It was also the most unique shopping experience for yarn I've had. But that's a story for another day.

I work in payroll. Those of you who are not self employed know what you're waiting on from your payroll department at this time of year, eh? W-2's for us Americans and if I remember correctly T-4's in Canada. Some longer work days than normal and probably a Saturday or two are staring me and my coworkers in the face. If you think of me and anyone else who does payroll, think kindly.

Lace Problems?

These two items showed up at my house right before Christmas, and yesterday was my first time using them. Anyone else think they could get hooked on playing with a new toy utilizing a very necessary tool for knitters? I wonder how many relationships these have saved? I'm sure many a spouse are thankful their knitter has these. We'll see what MFB thinks the first time he's home when I'm using them. I had no idea the swift was that big! I sure could have used these back in May when I brought this home from Maryland Sheep and Wool.

I used these yesterday to wind the EL Silky Wool and then started working on my lace project. My center stitch looks like it's wandering to the right and left and I'm not sure if it's going to straighten out with blocking or if I need to rip it out. Hmmm. Anyone with ideas?