My Middle Name is Patience

  

Meandering Monday

My Dad is serving as the hand model - look what Joan aka The Fairy Godknitter sent me for my birthday! Oh, you can't really see the purple skeins in the 7 Gorgeous Scarf Patterns kit but when I decide on a stitch pattern, there'll be months of those WIP pictures (as is my wont). Slow and unsteady, that's my motto.

There may or may not have been maple candies in the package but they were, ah consumed prior to documenting. That instant gratification thing and the thrill of discovering a maple candy shaped like a shell tastes the same as a maple candy shaped like a monkey. There was a comparison of notes.

Thank you so much Joan!

This is what I've been doing:

and undoing on the Undulating Waves Scarf:

It's heartening that I can now figure out how to fix it and actually dropped and reknit one of three repeats all the way to the first row of the repeat. I see why I have problems with left and right as directions though - every time I have to check if / means k2tog or if it's \ sKpsso. They're facing opposite directions. I confuse them even now. (When I first started the scarf? I had to put post it notes underlining the rows. People, this pattern is dead easy. Scary.)

KSD is running her annual Knitter's Hunk Award at handeyecrafts - too late to nominate but with 64 entries, your guy has a pretty good chance of showing up. Head over to her blog and vote now - 4 pairs are voted on every 24 hours.

I've been reading The Thirty Years War for the last thirty years - at least it seems like it. It's barely 300 pages and I'll bet half of that is endnotes, index, bibliography and maps but I have this thing about knowing what's going on and there are way too many Hapsburgs, Henrys and Ferdinands, not to mention German city-states, duchies, etc.  It's all pretty fascinating but it's slow going.

We seem to have three new kittens in the neighborhood - they are so cute. They romped through the hole in the fence the other morning - the siamese looking one first,then the black and white who proceeded to play keepaway much to the White Cat's annoyance. Finally the Gray & White kitten showed up and freed the White Kitten from the clutches of the Black & White kitten who then wandered disconsolantly about the hill, pawing at the pine needles occaionally. I may or may not have been calling them Melchior, Ezekiel and Kissinger, respectively.

Hez seems unamused by their presence but she was impressed by their routing and cornering of a mouse yesterday.