Books and more

I've been bad with the blogging lately. I blame it on sleep deprivation, baby's cold, my cold, and extra hours at work. If anyone's figured out the whole working mother thing, drop me a line, because the gig is kicking my butt.

To catch up on some old news, I had pre-ordered a copy of Teva Durham's Loop-d-Loop, and it arrived a couple weeks ago. I've already started a chain scarf for my niece. I figure a toddler version would be very popular with the preschool set.

My mother-in-law gave me a copy of "At Knit's End" when she was here for Mother's Day. Although I'm usually not big on books of affirmations and pearls of wisdom, this one is pretty cute. And it makes my yarn obsessions seem normal. Scary.

Today at the Sunset Celebration Weekend in Menlo Park (love that Breezehouse), I picked up a cute bag that I'm planning to use for a project bag. It's from Mixi Blue. Check them out, they're adorable -- and vinyl-coated, very important in these days of baby vomit. They're working on getting an online store together.

I'm now avoiding projects that cause me any stress -- the corset sweater stresses my hands and the flowerbasket shawl stresses my brain. The chain scarf is simply loops inside of loops. The only stress is when I forget to join the first round through an existing loop, which I've done more times than I care to admit.

I'm also having a little love affair with some red Radiance Wave (silk and alpaca) from Knitpicks. I want to make it into a shrug or some sort of bolero-type thing, but I haven't found the right pattern. I tried a simple 3x3 rib shrug, but it's not right for the waviness of the yarn. I'm considering something along the lines of the drop-stitch shrug from the latest IW, but I'm not sure I have enough yarn. I've actually been too lazy to go and count how many balls I have, but I think it's only five. It's a thicker yarn than the one in the pattern, so I'd have to adjust it.

I'm calling a moratorium on all new projects until I have some FO's. You heard it hear first.