Poor, long-lost blog! Here's a picture of my patchy sweater thus far. It's quite crude (well, I prefer to think of it as 'charmingly rustic') but I think I can ultimately make it into a viable pattern. It sure has been fun to knit, despite lots of rippings-out. The next one is going to be in a different color scheme and should be less lumpy, though blocking should help a lot on this one. It is like a little history of some of my favorite yarns - someone's handspun bunny blend, some angora tweed, some alpaca I got at the Fiber Frolic, etc, surrounded by silky tweed.

So I was asked to give a talk at the Falmouth Library, and they said they were curious about what it's like to have one's own yarn shop. I emailed back and said that I would talk about how I choose yarns, what people are knitting, and would bring lots of goodies for them to look at, etc....and the publicity blurb that was emailed out says that I'm going to talk about 'the ups and downs of having your own shop'. Hey! I didn't say anything about talking about the downs, and I'm not going to - who wants to hear about that? I don't think it would be a great pr move to go to the library and bitch about things, after all - and on the whole, other than typical trials involved in having a retail operation, I don't have much to complain about....

Dot gave me a little gizmo called KnitKing calculator. I've sort of fallen in love with it, perhaps because it reminds me of my favorite toy from some years back. (Like 1998 or so...) Lori, my best bud from grad school who lives in Alaska now, left me her gameboy after a visit. It was this eentsy little thing that is probably incredibly old school now. It had a game on it called 'Mole Mania' that I became completely addicted to. I stopped reading and probably would have stopped knitting until I got through the entire thing. I'm pretty sure I also stopped speaking to my husband at the time, and that it may have contributed to the demise of my first marriage - for which I should thank it. Anyway, one of the best things about it was its pocket size - it amazed me that you could lose yourself in something that had a screen that was only a couple of inches across, and it was a pretty ingenious Japanese game with a funny little storyline involving stolen mole babies, an evil mole-smashing farmer, and monster-like 'bosses' that had to be defeated. KnitKing calculator has that compact, retro gizmo feel, and it handily calculates armholes and shoulder shaping, etc. It's my new friend. (But will not affect my relationship. Josh likes it too.)

Must go and knit. Bye!