skittermagoo!

blocka blocka!

Yep, that's right, there's a bit of a blocking party going on here at Skittermagoo headquarters . . . the knitting on Samus is DONE! I actually finished it on Tuesday while I was home having my garage door replaced (just one more event in the February That Ate Our Savings), but was waiting for my nifty blocking board to arrive from joann.com. (ooh! and it's on sale right now, too!)

So, with no further adieu, here is Samus's body all pinned out after a nice warm bath in Eucalan:

mmmmm, the smell of wet wool . . .

I couldn't fit the body part and the sleeves on the board at the same time, so the sleeves will have to wait a bit.

What's that? You want to see a closeup of that cable braid? Sure!!

mmmm, cabley . . .

I had to reach way back into the archives to figure out how long this sweater has been in the works, and was horrified to find it's been almost a year (I started in March '06)! I did the sleeves first, and the cable band on the body marinated for a really, really long time. Also, once the stitches were picked up and it was nothing but miles of stockinette up to the armholes, it got a bit boring and was put away for a while. And I maybe also waited for a while to even pick up all those stitches because I was a little scared or something. Anyway.

Now I'm trying to decide what sweater to cast on for next . . . one of my goals for 2007 is to have a sweater on the needles at all times, thus hopefully finishing more than one this year! Maybe I'll have to make a poll and let y'all choose what is next up in line!

p.s. All that stretching and smooshing and pinning and stuff? It's not as easy as one might think!!

Happy Friday!

Oh, sheesh, finally it's Friday!! It's been a long and trying week for me at work; unfortunately a week of not much progress (my experiments have all decided to stop working all at the same time, while my boss is out of town and will be returning on Monday expecting some data). But enough about that, it's FRIDAY! And a half-day at work for me: I'm going to meet some fab friends for lunch, and then I have to be home this afternoon to meet the garage-door-tune-up guy.

I've got some pictures for y'all, but since I'm not at home and that's where the camera is, you'll just have to wait a bit!

What's everyone doing this weekend? For me, it's all about relaxing . . . I'm hoping to get a bunch of knitting done on Samus, and I may well be teaching someone how to spin on my wheel! I've also been bitten hard by the get-the-gardening-started bug (I need to get some flowerbeds and such ready for planting in the spring), but it's supposed to be cold and icky this weekend, so going through the seed catalogs and dreaming may have to suffice.

Oh! And hey, here's a Friday Haiku!

Sitting in the lab
Wishing I could be knitting
Or anything else.

Yep, I'm glad the weekend is almost here!