Guess what?!

April Wedding Shawl, Socks, Ballband Washcloth

My camera has been found!

I lost my camera while waiting for Roommie/M to finish being grilled by his committee. As soon as we were up at the party, I went to fish out my camera from my bag. No camera. So, I ran down to where we were sitting before and no camera. I knew I should check with lost and found but I was in denial. If I never check if it's at lost and found, I don't know for sure it's been stolen and lost forever, I thought. Well, yesterday, M sent me an email. Someone in the office had emailed him about it. Yippie!!!!!
I just blocked this shawl last weekend. I've been working on it off and on for 2 or 3 years now. The pattern was free from Lion Brand. It actually calls for a bulky yarn, but I modified it. I had this wool/silk yarn from Blackberry Ridge Mill that I had tried making a different shawl with. After ripping that one out several times, I gave up and went for this one. I adore it. I want to wear it all the time. I want to make five more shawls. Right now we are having the perfect weather for wearing a shawl as an outer garment and I think in California it will be even better.

My strategy for working on this shawl was as follows: have perfect shawl weather, knit a few inches, weather changes, stop working on it; get sick, want shawl to wrap up in, knit a few more rows, get better, stop working on it (you can see why it took so long to finish). I had the knitting done by the very end of my last bout of the flu so I wrapped up in it even though it hadn't been blocked. I finally got around to blocking it last weekend. I actually could only block half of it at a time because only half of it would fit on my bed at a time.

Have I mentioned I adore it?

As for the April Wedding Shawl, I am about halfway done with the center panel. The markers in the picture above mark 20 repeats (they are 2-row repeats). I need to stick another marker in there. I have just over 60 repeats done and I need to do 132 total. Then there is a pointy border that is around 15 stitches at it's peaks. The wedding is at the end of the month, so I should be able to finish. Especially since my cable is getting hooked up tomorrow! Hooray! Back to TV watching + shawl knitting. And I will have high-speed internet so no more uploading pictures at work. Hooray!

Sorry, but it's 60 degrees here and sunny and it feels like spring and I'm feeling a little giddy. I ate lunch outside today. My seasonal affective disorder is devolving into spring mania.

Hooray!

Knitting? What knitting?

It turns out I do the majority of my knitting while sitting in front of the TV. At present, I am waiting to have cable installed and therefore have no tv reception whatsoever and therefore am not watching TV. Instead, I am doing jigsaw puzzles. I have become a jigsaw puzzle fool. Since moving in to my apt. about a week and a half ago, I have finished one 750 piece puzzle and am about a quarter of the way finished with a 1000 piece puzzle. I glued the first puzzle together and hung it up on the wall. With that one done and still no cable, I bought a set of two 1000 piece puzzles on Sunday (I'm working on the one with the flowers in a pitcher right now). I've become slightly addicted to them. Since I have a cat, I had also bought a roll-up puzzle mat. Each night, I unroll the puzzle and work on it for a bit. As it gets later and later, I think, "I should really stop and go to bed. I'll just find one more matching piece." And about 30 minutes and 10 more pieces later, I still haven't gone to bed. It's a little sad, really. A woman living alone, with just a cat for company, addicted to jigsaw puzzles. Somebody should stage an Intervention.

The hold-up on the TV situation has been due to a hold-up on the high-speed internet situation. I am sick to death of dial-up. I pondered DSL, but it turns out my cable company had a deal where you could get digital cable plus high-speed internet for a total of $33/month. Which sounded like a damn fine deal to me. But, I had to order a cable modem (which they gave you a rebate for, so it's free except for shipping). However, it arrived yesterday, so now I just have to schedule installation for later this week and it will be back to TV plus knitting. I guess that means I should hurry up and finish my puzzle or it might never get done!

Introducing...

Dr. Roommie, PhD

Unfortunately, I lost my camera in the midst of his thesis defense (long story), so I don't have a picture of him from that day. Here he is modeling the hat I made for him for his birthday. For another pic of him see this entry.

If it seems like everyone I know is defending their thesis lately, well, they are. Roommie had a particularly rough time. His committee was Evil, so it was a long, arduous process. Like everyone else, he gave a one hour talk. Unlike everyone else, he was in with his committee for four hours after that (with a few breaks). We are usually grilled by our committees in private after our public presentation, but usually only for about an hour to an hour and a half. So, his was an unusual case. But, he passed! Yay!!!! He is now in Michigan, living with friends while he finishes his thesis rewrites and looks for a job. He wants some sort of science job near Beaufort, South Carolina because that's where his longterm boyfriend is moving to (he has a tenure-track position as a Spanish professor at USCB). Here's a picture of them together:

Aren't they cute?

Since Roommie is no longer my roommate, I suppose I should give him another name. I guess M will have to do. Although, I do still think of him as my roommate. And why not? John lives halfway across the country and he's still my husband.

MIA camera

I know I said I would post pictures of my Cabin Cove projects last week but I have lost my camera. I suspect it may have been stolen, but I still haven't checked every lost and found on campus so I can't claim that yet.

Despite the fact that I rarely posted pictures anyway, without my camera I don't feel like a proper blogger and haven't been inspired to post. Sorry.

Can't wait to tell hubby. *sigh*

But wait, you also get--

--the flu!

Like many other people I know, I got a flu shot. Then, this week, I caught a cold (probably from A who had one as well). Much mucus was produced. And then, it started: the fatigue, the getting winded from walking across the room, the fever, the achiness. Yes, it's the flu.

Contrary to popular belief, getting a flu shot does not mean you cannot get the flu. It just means you won't get the particular strains that you were vaccinated against. I just happened to be unlucky enough to get exposed to one of the thousands of other strains of flu out there. *le sigh*

So, I've pretty much been sitting at home, sleeping, drinking tea (decaf only, please, with echinacea if you've got it), grading genetics exams (what some of these children think is possible to see in a microscope is astounding!), and getting a little bit of knitting done.

The winner of the color contest is: Just Pink. Thank you for all of your input, but I went to The Man himself to ask about the colors and which he thought would go better with my dress (I included the picture) and my skin tone. And, because he is a first-rate gentleman, Dave emailed me back. Here is what he said about the colors:

I think with your
skin situation, the Just Pink would probably be a better choice. I think
the Pink Fire will fight with your skin tone. I'd say, with that dress,
either the pink or the medium Silver Grey.

So, I bought both the Just Pink and the Silver Grey. Just to see which I liked better. Besides, I've been wanting a grey shawl/wrap as well, so I figured it would be worth it just in case I decided I didn't like the way the pink went with the dress. It came on Monday (I know! I should've mentioned it sooner!) and I started with the simple lace shawl pattern in Victorian Lace Today (hereafter known as The April Wedding Shawl) in the Just Pink. By the way, I just have to mention that I love getting yarn from Dave. He wraps it up in tissue paper and ties it with raffia and includes a little bit of lavender in it to make it smell yummy. It's like buying something from a fancy boutique! Anyway, I'm glad I went with the Just Pink. On my screen, the colors were looking darker than they really were, more reddish, which I only know now that I have the Just Pink in hand and see that it is more like a mauvy rose than a fushia (which is what it looked like on my computer).* This is why I went straight to the source about my color dilemma since he was the only one who could see the real, true colors.

So far, I'm liking how the shawl is turning out . I'd show you a picture, but I'm on dial-up and you wouldn't believe how long it takes to upload a picture. Maybe next week. Anyway, I took that pic only about three inches into it (at which point, I held it up to Roommie and said, "Look! Only 55 more inches to go!") and I'm now at a foot and a half, so you can see the stitch pattern better. I'm supposed to do 132 pattern repeats and I have 46 done, so I'm a third of the way through the center panel. There is a border that is knitted on at the end, but it is not very wide so it shouldn't take very long. I've never knit on a border before, but the directions in the book are very clear and I'm no longer afraid of trying it!

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Thank you for all of your responses to my baby woes. John and I are talking and I no longer think I'm going to wait until I leave Chicago before trying to get pregnant. We shall see what the fates have in store for us on that front.

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Well, that's it for Chez Influenza. Tune in next time for more exciting knitting drama!


*I totally blame my computer for this. If you've ever seen Dave's photos, you know that they are works of art. I'm certain he took photos that correctly represented the colors, but different computer screens show colors a little differently as I'm sure many of you have found out!