Frustrations & weird weather

'Twas indeed very blustery last night... just think, the other day we had record highs, and aparently early this morning we had record rainfall. At some point last night the wind huffed and puffed and blew a house and shed down... there was a minor tornado somewhere in Orange County, but I have no idea how close it was to where I live. Hopefully my house of brick will keep me (relatively) safe.

I'm not going to claim any direct cause and effect, but I'll second Yarn Harlot's call for greater environmental responsibility.

Well, to vent my lack-of-dissertation-progress frustrations, as well as frustrations over my overly-large-current-laptop-sleeve not fitting in my wonderful new backpack, I furiously hooked my way through 100g of Peruvian Collection Highland Wool tonight. I am making a felted laptop sleeve, which will hopefully work much better. Together with last night's efforts, I'm about 50% done. At least I hope I am, since I've now used nearly 50% of the yarn I purchased for this project. Here's how it's looking so far:



Note how I cleverly included my laptop for scale. ;) The medium colour of blue yarn shown there is the third colour of blue I'll be working into the sleeve. (After a wide band of pale blue, I'll be doing the same transition to the medium blue.) I also plan a nifty cap to the sleeve, attached on one side, hanging over on the other three. (And probably fastened with a quiet zipper, but I may consider other closures.) Hopefully the darn thing will shrink to the correct size when washed... not shrinking enough is okay, but knowing my luck, it'll probably shrink too much.

I think the other reason I wanted to make progress on this project is because I need to buy a bit more sock yarn. Yes, I have sock yarn coming out my ears, but tomorrow I'll be going out to buy more. Aaaaack! Why? Because my sockapalooza pal wants *plain* socks. Some of the yarn Josie gave me is probably close to okay (the blue stuff), but my pal's already going out on a limb letting a *gasp* crocheter in on the knitting sock exchange. I want to make sure she's not sorry she's letting me play with the "cool kids". But anyway, I needed to "destash" a bit before I "stash" some more. (I've now used nearly three balls on the laptop sleeve, so that should counteract the 2-3 balls I'll need to buy tomorrow.)

That reminds me... Josie, I meant to ask you when you were over if you wanted me to make you a pair of socks. If you're interested, e-mail me the length and circumference of your foot. When I'm done, I'll ask you for a good address to mail the package. ;)

Hmmm... I now have two patterns, two socks, and a sleeve in progress, and an afghan in limbo. Time to convert some of those to finished objects... but not tonight: it's past my bedtime, and I need to get out early and buy my yarn so I can check out a stitch-n-bitch at 2. (And then come home and work on my $^&*#^%#&!*&%!$#@*&#% dissertation.)