Monday, March 19, 2007

Catching my breath, catching up

Dear Laura,

You may be relieved to know that despite my absence from blog world (and apparently email-responding world....I got your lovely message, thank you, response coming ASAP)...I am not dead. I am in fact alive and have even found time to knit lately. I'm just a bit paralyzed, with the big news of last week (for our non-existent readers: I found out what my life is going to look like for the next two years and it's mostly good)...and the creative juices just aren't flowing! Hence, no blogging, and very little emailing. I think I'm finally recovering though. :)

How are things in B.C.? Have you started your ballet camisole yet? I do not have the new IK yet (and am trying to resist in general, since I clearly have no time to knit anything from it....although I suspect I will relent and buy it later this week, when I have a scheduled study date with a classmate at the Starbucks inside Chapters)....anyways, what I was going to say was that the Cable Down Raglan looks lovely and I think you should go for it!
I got a box of KnitPicks goodness in the mail on Friday, which was excellent timing because I kind of needed some yarny goodness after all the emotion of the week. None of the yarn looked anything like it did on my monitor (although it was quite close to the catalogue colour....too bad I didn't look at the catalogue before I ordered). Anyways, the watermelon colour is pink, not red. And the crocus colour is pinky purple, not dark purple. However, the colours I picked still, fortuitously, look fabulous together so I decided to cast on - and so far I like the results.

I have been doing tons of knitting because we've begun the review lectures for our licensing exam, so I am spending a fair chunk of time sitting in lectures. The lecturer today even told the class that she had noticed a knitter was present, and that she herself had knit her way through her med school review lectures. She seemed like an awfully smart lady - I figure it was probably all that knitting, don't you think?

Behold, the first stripe of the Circle of Friends blanket (a.k.a. nephew #2 blanket), 4 rows from completion:

Or, Stove With Yarn.
(What can I say....it's dark and wintery out today
and I couldn't find any good lighting anywhere else!)

Only six more stripes like that and the blanket will be finished!

That's all the knitting news that's fit to print. Hope you're doing well. We must have a good long chat sometime soon.

Love,
Nikki

p.s. Currently reading: I just finished Crocodile on the Sandbank, the first in a series of mysteries about Amelia Peabody, a British female amateur archaeologists/amateur detective in Egypt in the early 1900's, which someone told me was "along the same lines" as Laurie R. King's books about Mary Russell. My take: yes, "along the same lines" as in "smart feminist protagonist solves mysteries." Otherwise...meh. The plot and writing were kind of mediocre. I like Mary Russell a lot better than Amelia Peabody.

No comments: