Program Interrupted
Three days since my last post. Well, I could have told you so... There was a certain danger to starting this blog before all the season finales aired. DVRs let you create a mist of illusion around TV watching, making you feel strong and in control. But when you consciously clear the decks to watch all your favorite shows in real time for the final episodes, it becomes startlingly clear that you watch way more TV than you thought you did! In the past couple weeks, the book has closed on Desperate Housewives, Brothers & Sisters, Dancing with the Stars, American Idol, Lost, Gray's Anatomy, and ER (at least till the new seasons begin). That's a whole lotta TV. With all this new free time, I better have a really clean house!

A stitch in time
I had to put the shell bag down for a while. Way too hard on my hands, and I have decreased to the point that I need my #8 double-points. I only wish I knew where they were! For respite, I have gone back to Sock No. 2 of Nancy Bush's Heelless Sleeping Socks, in Socks That Rock, color ??? (the ball band quite likely ran away with my#8 DPNs). These socks have a bit of a story and are the first pair I have knit "just for me." More when they are finished. In the meantime, here's an in-progress shot:



(if anyone recognizes the color, please let me know!)

Learning the Ropes (and Knitting with...Rope?)
Today I set up my Flickr account and uploaded some photos to test the waters. This is going to be fun! My site address is http://www.flickr.com/photos/dixiedoxie/ I will definitely need to be more disciplined about taking and uploading photos from my camera.

A stitch in time
I took advantage of the late afternoon sun to snap a picture of my current WIP, the shell bag that I picked up in Charleston. The linen/cotton yarn is gorgeous but oh-so-rough to work with. Cabling and decreasing at the same time really puts a strain on the yarn, the needles, and my hands. I may need to seek out a different pattern for the second bag's worth of yarn.

Tube-ular knitting
One of the best things about knitting is that it allows me to be respectably productive while vegging out to completely useless TV. Tonight's knitting was accomplished to the penultimate episode of Dancing with the Stars. Apolo Ohno is incredible. I actually tried to vote, for heaven's sake ("tried" being the operative word), and I don't think I am part of their model demographic either!

DogMa
Let me introduce you to two of my "babies": Lucy and Mickey. Life is never dull with these two around! Mickey is a chocolate-and-tan longhaired dachshund who has shared our home since he was just 8 weeks old. Lucy, a poodle and ??? mix, is a rescue who just joined our family this year. She has brought a lot of balance and joy into our lives, and now my husband and I each have a dog to cuddle with again. More on them, as well as the feather and fin contingent of our household, later...

A stitch in time

On the needles today is a cabled shell bag by Sara Baldwin. I picked up this free pattern last week while visiting Knit, a fabulous yarn shop in historic Charleston, SC. It works up double-stranded with two balls of Maggi's Linen, and the shop sample was adorable. I picked up enough yarn for two bags, one in a raspberry-orangeade shade and one in the palest of sea blues, along with a card of natural shell buttons to use as accents. I started on the border pattern twice, but the combination of left- and right-twisted stitches and the linen/cotton blend was just too much. The yarn is very splitty, especially when worked double, and there is no give. After casting on a third time, I switched to a seed stitch border band and am now past the second cable repeat and on cruise control.

Late to the Dance
I have a confession to make. I am a wallflower. For years, I have been quietly watching from the sidelines, tapping my toes in tune with my favorite (mostly knitting) bloggers but never really daring to join the circle. Sure, there were moments when I'd coyly compose a comment or two. But mostly there were days when I'd let the rhythm of the links rock me from one post to the next, lost in the music of everyone else's self-expression. Lately, the drums have been pounding louder, and the beat is more insistent: start a blog, learn new steps, join the dance. So here I am. Is there room for one more in the conga line?