And still no knitting

no knitting to show - i think it's the heat?? it's so freaking hot here and not a drop of rain in sight. alas. I'm finishing up a shawl to show. pix to come soon. in the meantime, some fun:

I think I’ve done this before, but I’ll do it again anyway

4 Jobs I have had in my life
- I worked in a dry cleaners all during high school. I secretly loved the way they organized dry cleaned shirts versus laundered shirts
- For 3 years, I worked as an assistant to museum curator, organizing art exhibitions and talking with NY and LA galleries. God, I loved this job and don't know why I quit (oh yeah, couldn't pay my rent :)
- In college, I tutored French to disabled students
- I was able to get an internship with the world renowned software company
SAS during a summer in grad school. Man, was this cool! We had M&M's every Wed and doughnuts on Fridays. They had a grand piano in the main cafe. The original model for Yoda was in the R&D building in which I worked.

4 films I can watch again and again
-Any Poirot
-Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
-Arsenic & Old Lace
-Pride & Prejudice (the BBC version)

4 places I have lived
- I lived in France 2 different times. At age 20, I moved there for 8 months. During college, I lived there for a summer
- I lived in Chicago for all of 6 months!
- I lived in Raleigh, NC for 7 years
- I have resided in Richmond for 3 years

4 TV series I watch
-CSI
-Law & Order (still watch the reruns)
-Six Feet under (hilarious!)
-The Sopranos

4 places I have been on holiday
-Prague - Ah, what a great city!
-Switzerland - I haven't been in 10 years but would love to go back!
-Scotland - went there on my honeymoon
-France - where I've left part of my soul :()

4 things I do every time I go on the Net
-check my email
-check the news
-check Yahoo airfares
-check the website I'm responsible for

4 things I would NOT eat for anything in the world
- rhubarb
- a steak (although as a lapsed vegetarian, i sometimes crave them)
- brains and eggs
- pig's feet

4 places I would love to be right now
- on sabbatical
- in Europe
- visiting San Francisco
- upstairs knitting!

4 people to tag
- Cate
- Brandy
- Anne
- My Mum (sorry, Evelyn, can't remember your blog name!)

SoXperience 2007 and Magic Loop!

I attended SoXperience yesterday at Carodan Farm in Stanardsville, VA. Not only was the farm beautiful and peaceful, but I met so many interesting ladies! I learned how to do magic loop socks at 9am and proceeded to create a small baby sock using this method. Wow - it's easy. I can't believe I haven't learned this before. There is a disclaimer here though: The baby sock out of worsted was easy. I bought some sock yarn to try out an adult sock which was a bit more difficult using the magic loop method. I started over 2 times. I think I'll stick to worsted for now and move on to sock yarn using #0's or #1's after some success using worsted.

I would highly recommend going to visit Caroline at Carodan. The farm is so serene. She has several little sheep right now and 2-3 llamas which I found to be quite funny. The llamas definately do their job. If you walk up to a sheep, the llama comes running over to you to check things out. I found this to be a hoot for some reason!

Just down the road from Carodan is Rivanna Rivers alpaca farm. I met Dee Dee, the owner. She's a wonderful person who is passionate about her alpaca. She invited me to the farm for a look at the animals. I'm going to take the hubby to see if I can convince him to buy a farm :)

I'll post more photos as soon as I can download them. I did buy some wonderful sock yarn yesterday - 2 skeins made from shrimp and crab shells!

Isn't this blog about knitting?

Yes; however, my camera stinks so I can't show you any updates on currrent projects! While I'm trying to figure out what to do about the camera (ideas about a good, affordable camera are welcome!), I pulled this pseduo meme from Purl Parables. Try it. It's fun and a lot more difficult that it appears. Funny the things that pop into your head at 7am on a Sunday morning.

SCATTERGORIES.

Rules: Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following…they MUST be real places, names, things…NOTHING made up!

If you can’t think of anything, skip it. Try to use different answers if the person before you had the same 1st initial. You CAN’T use your name for the boy/girl name question and you can’t use a search engine… Now Go!

1. Your Name: Susan

2. Famous singer/band: Suzanne Vega

3. 4 letter word: sewn

4. Street name: South Street

5. Color: Silver

6. Gifts/presents: Soup

7. Vehicle: Saab

8. Things in a Souvenir Shop: Shells

9. Boy Name: Sam

10. Girl Name: Shelly

11. Movie Title: Sabrina

12. Drink: Sprite

13. An Occupation: Sumo wrestler (couldn't think of anything else!)

14. Flower: Shasta Daisy

15. Celebrity: Shelley Winters

16. Magazine: Southern Living

17. U.S. City: Sioux Falls

18. Pro Sports Team: Spurs

19. Fruit: Strawberry

20. Reason for Being Late for Work: schoolbus

21. Something You Throw Away: Scoopable Litter

22. Things You Shout: Shoot!

23. Cartoon Character: Sylvester

you know your burnt out when...

1 - you drink coffee and knit until 8:30am knowing you have to be at work at 9am. at 8:30 you rush frantically to take a shower and get in on time.
2 - you take 2 hour lunches every day thinking 'no one will notice'
3 - you continually make lists at work never crossing anything out
4 - you find yourself staring at the walls in your office
5 - you open up 20 mozilla tabs and think 'i'll organize my bookmarks today!'
6 - you clean up your inbox which has ~3000 emails
7 - you constantly talk with your female 30-something, career focused friends about how life as a homemaker would be grand
8 - you sit in meetings and give administration looks like they're the stupidest people alive
9 - you leave at 4:00p every thursday and friday
10 - you call in sick at least 1 day a week

can you tell i'm burned out with my job?! my friend lisa describes some of this angst as perfectionism. i am in her boat. i am a total perfectionist. despite this, i am beginning to see a real shift in women my age. i've talked to at least 3 women at work who,have careers and master's degrees and who want to stay at home and manage the house. my hubby's job offer for a director of domestic operations is looking better every day!

Latest and Greatest

It's been so long since I've written in my blog that I have no idea where to start! Work has been stressful this month. I'm finishing up a huge project which makes me really tired at the end of the day. Despite this, knitting continues. Believe it or not, I'm still working on Ben's sweater! I knit a couple of rounds, put it down for 2 days, then knit a couple more. I really need to just finish the darn thing. He won't wear it until winter anyways, right?

I also started on a stole from Interweave 2006. It's suprisingly easy. I'm using a beautiful skein of Art Fibers silk from San Francisco. (Ben bought this for me last year). It's gorgeous. I promise to post photos soon :)


Since I had so much cotton in my stash, I also started on the Caftan Pullover from Interweave 2006. Seaming this will be challenging as I have yet to seam a sweater! I'm hoping someone at the Yarn Lounge can help me out.



That is really all the news fit to print. Bloo is growing like a weed. We are loving his crazy antics! I'm off to give him the 2 hours of petting time he requires each evening :)

Blooregard

Bloo (prounounced Blue) is the newest member of our family! Isn't he cute? He's a black and white 2 month old rescue from the SPCA of Richmond. We went to the SPCA prepared to adopt 2 adolescent cats; however, we saw Bloo couldn't resist. He was so lively and sweet. Right now, he's pure kitten and running around as fast as possible with a milk carton plastic lid. He's having a blast. I'm already trying to teach him that my leg is not a jungle gym! Last night, he wore himself out so much that he just slept on Ben's lap all night. He's such a sweet boy!

Visual DNA

Very fun, interactive site!

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

SoXperience 2007

I'm there! Let me know if you're going to Standardsville to SoXperience 2007 and perhaps we can carpool! Right now, I'm signed up for the following workshops:

Saturday:
Magic Loop Socks
Techniques for Socks

Sunday:
Yarn Tasting Workshop

Chocolate!

Ben sent me 6 pounds of Ghirardelli squares for Easter! What a good hubby! There's caramel, dark chocolate and peppermint! Yummy chocolate for knitting.

I knitted more on the hubby sweater yesterday. Sorry, no pix. It's coming along. I am working on the first sleeve as I didn't want to finish the body while Ben was away. I need to continually measure his torso. While working on the sleeve, I watched The Age of Innocence. I didn't know until yesterday that this was Scorsese film. I now need to reread the novel by Edith Wharton. I love historical drama, but am always astounded at how cruel society could be in the late 19th century. The Age of Innocence was an interesting and really beautiful movie with a bit of a disappointing ending. Despite this, it was well worth the 2 1/2 hours.

I Lied

I'm sympathetic to those poor gardeners in the Midwest and Northeast right now.

I'm not planting today because it's freakin' snowing here! This is probably the first time in my life that I'm not excited about snow. Instead, I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut-off trying to find sheets to cover up my plants. My poor 9' rose was covered in snow when I awoke this morning. All of its arms were bent to the ground! I'm not sure if I can save it now, but I'm going to try. I covered the tomato plants and peony last night. I didn't cover the roses unfortunately. The temperature dipped to 32 last night, which may not kill the roses and hydrangea. However, it's going to be 28 tonight! so I'd better try to cover them. Does anyone know how I should cover a 9' rose?

Urgh! This is not the weekend I was expecting. I guess Ms. Mother Nature is punishing us for something!


Note: Just added because I had to write it down - has nothing to do with plants or knitting. You won't believe what a staffer had the nerve to say to me yesterday. I was moving my office as we recently had someone leave and I wanted to move to a quieter, bigger office. So...I'm moving my things and this guy comes over and tells me that he was planning on moving my things for me because I am a woman! I said, 'I'm perfectly capable of moving my own things thank you.' He said, " Oh, you women who believe in 'women's lib'!" Can you believe it?! I wanted to smack him right then and there. Instead, I didn't even respond to this ridiculous, asinine statement. What century are we living in? What state am I living in is probably the real question!?