Two Duh Moments

I can't believe that I forgot to post yesterday. I meant to. Really I did. I just forgot. I guess that there's more to getting back to normal than just catching up on all of the blogs that you've missed. It'll take a little while.

One thing that I haven't forgotten is my knitting and crocheting. It's ever present and ever changing. Case in point... my battle with startitis conitinues. The newest symptom is this little shrug that I started for Stinkerbelle. She has a dress that she'll wear to two upcoming events and, like the dress I plan to wear, hers is sleeveless so I want to make her a little shrug. The first of these events is just over 2 weeks away so I finally started this shrug, the Two-Tone Ribbed Shrug(Rav link) from Fitted Knits. After considering a bit of Rav research I decided to use Cotton-Ease in a pretty turquoise color.

This is what it looked like at about 6 o'clock last night. It has since been frogged and restarted because I made a stupid error with the increases. It was stupid because I misread the instructions and only did the increase on one side of each marker instead of both. Duh! I knew this was wrong. It felt wrong. It looked wrong. It was wrong but still I continued. It's amazing how often I ignore my instincts like that. Thankfully now I'm back on track and I'm certain that this will be ready in plenty of time for Stinky to wear.

Speaking of stuff that I'm knitting on a deadline - my shawl is suddenly making rapid progress. August is a quiet time in law firms so I brought my shawl to work and did a little work on it during lunch on Monday. It was so much better and I got so involved with the shawl that my lunch may have been extended a bit. I think that the bright lights in my office are really helping. Duh! Of course it's easier when you have proper lighting. I'm again amazed at how long it took for me to figure this out. I still have quite a long way to go but I'm feeling more optimistic now.

In the picture of the shrug, you can just barely see the stitch markers I'm using. They're cute little cupcakes that I got in my Sweet Treats swap package. In the middle of all the recent craziness I got my package from the recent beach themed swap. My partner in this swap was Marisol and she put together such a lovely bunch of treats. There were tea bags and candy and all kinds of stuff to get my toes beach-ready including green and gold nail polish that my girls and I will have fun with.

The cute little bag also held some gorgeous sock yarn in colors that are very "me". I'll really have to choose the pattern I use to use it for carefully and make sure that DQ keeps her hands off it.

I really hope that Marisol likes the treats that I chose for her as much as I like mine.