Thursday, August 2, 2012

The winner! and other bits and pieces

I'm so happy that even at the end of the blog tour for Leslie Ann Bestor's Cast On, Bind Off, so many people were excited about this book.  As The Knit Girllls' podcast explained, there is a Kindle version as well that lets you enlarge pictures for an added bonus, so if you didn't win a copy here or at another blog on the tour, you can definitely go that route.  Or just buy yourself a copy - it's priced pretty affordably!

All that said: the random number generator I used deems the winner to be

Commenter Number 22

aka Rainlover, to whom I have sent an e-mail via her Blogger profile.  Congrats Rainlover! and sympathy to everybody else... so nice to have you all come by and hang out, especially if you hadn't been here before.

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I'm just going to fill up the rest of today's post with randomness, some of which will be knitting because OH MY GOODNESS is the end of the Olympics coming super fast or what.  I am so doomed in my goal to get two twined mitts done in the next, what, 11 days? but more on that later.

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Speaking of doomed: while twining last night I watched a documentary on the sinking of a ferry in 1994, with commentary by survivors, and quite apart from the horror of what they and their fellow passengers went through I was struck by the reality of how much tenacity and focus was necessary to be a survivor.  Especially since what I watched before that was Kiki's Delivery Service.  Either way: lucky to be twining some mittens on a nice warm dry sofa.

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I can't remember what led me to look up what Fran Drescher has been up to lately but I did land on her site, Cancer Schmancer, and wanted to recommend a visit if you haven't already stumbled across it.  There are great tips for detoxing your home and checking up on the safety of the cosmetics you use every day, but also: a host of cheat sheets to help you stay informed about cancer symptoms and catch it early.

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Thinking something cheery would be good about now?  Check out this video of a spinner working with angora directly from the cuddly bunny on her knee.  I mean really.  If that isn't enough to make you want to learn to spin, what is?

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I know you're wondering how far I got on my mitten yesterday, so here you go:


Yes.  That's possibly 2 inches longer, but I doubt it.  In fact I sort of measured and it looks like I'm getting 11 or 12 rounds to an inch, which is just...

.... really really slow.

I'm fighting the thought in the back of my mind which is that I could probably pair the very nice square needles that are sitting unused on my desk with the very nice handspun I made specifically for this project and finish those mittens by the end of the Olympics, even if I only start today.  But a deal's a deal.  right?  gaaaahh

(the mittens will be beautiful.  it is totally going to be worth it.  also: I'm almost all the way to the thumb on this one, which reminds me: must find holders, or 'waste' yarn for tying off those stitches later.)




Okay: end of random.  I'm off to do many productive things none of which will be knitting probably but we can hope.  See you tomorrow! sometime, not sure when.  Have a great, just downright fabulous day, 'kay?

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