hooray for barnes and noble.

oh look, I'm in a bookstore. surprise, surprise...

...although it comes to my mind, albiet slowly and sheepishly, that I've forgotten my camera at home. the memory card with all my happy photos is in the camera. bother. oh well.

I started knitting a pair of cably wristlets for my secret pal in this newfangled yarn I got from the lovely Michelle at funwithyarn. it's Ingeo, which I gather is some sort of extruded plant goo that's nicely recycleable- or -ed and happily vegan. (I have to confess that I don't really care about its being vegan. I like wool, and I really don't think sheep mind being shorn, as long as it's not me doing the shearing because I have no idea how one shears a sheep and honestly, I have enough trouble shaving my legs and remaining nick-free. I like leather. I have a whole backpack made of leather. yay, norway. anyway. I do have friends who are vegan to varying degrees, which made me happy when I heard of this ingeo stuff.)

and actually I have to confess that I more went "ooo....pretty..." to the colors and then went "uh? ingeo? what?" to the actual fiber-stuff. anyway. yes. the wristlets!

began knitting. not so sure about the ingeo stuff now. it's...interesting. I had a horrid time with getting a decent tension and while the ball feels great, the three-quarters-done wristlet feels kinda...strange. almost like plastic. the cables have nice definition (it's a fine-to-bulky weight, so they look a little funky at times, but still good) but the feel is making me sort of twitchy. yeah. so that's project one right now, although it looks as if the wind is blowing towards making it project one-to-rip-out. sigh.

project two: am consulting a higher power about my miracle yarn shoalwater shawl. my yarn supply is dwindling in my accent colors and I'm staring another two and a half pattern repeats in the face going...uh...crap. I know I bought enough yardage to finish, but did I buy enough to finish without making unbalanced color bands? curse the storvick OCD.

I've decided that the drawback to learning to knit without using patterns is that you look at a pattern and go, hey, that's cute, but what if I make it x or add a y or work this pattern from this sweater into that hat and before you know it you don't know what's going on and you gently put the book/pattern/slip/whatever back on the shelf, bring all the UFOs to your mind, and tell yourself "no." or at least that's what you say you do, and it's what you believe you did, at least until you get home and realize there's this thing in the bag that you didn't remember purchasing. it's a strange twilight-zoney thing.

lots of munchkins in bnn today in varying stages of awareness and dress. there's an adorable escapee from the napping woman on the sofa who is now naked but for a diaper because who wants to wear a clingy jumper on a day like today even if it's got purple butterflies on it, a burgeoning bookworm in one of those front-baby carrier-pouch things who is staring at all the books mom's standing in front of with this look of fierce concentration, or at least concentrated drooling, and an angel claire type who is definitely going to be trouble as soon as dad takes little brother off to the bathroom and mom blinks.

stopped at petco for some water goo to make Ovid happier when he enters the land of northern minnesota iron water and there was a guy with a newfie ooold puppy and a baby newfie puppy. they were so cute. big newfie was going grey all down his chest and little newfie could manage about four bounds before tripping itself/walking into a case/bumping old newfie/simply going splat. it would then look up at the nearest human and go "....buh?"

sigh. now I want a newfie. ok, I've wanted a newfie since mom and I were biking on the path and saw a pony in the distance- a pony that turned out to be a dog upon closer inspection. still. ah well. eventually. maybe.
look! my Jterm class. we so crazy... hehe.