Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

I've reached that hideous middle phase of a knitting project where it seems to go on forever and nothing happens. (This is the phase where the Yarn Harlot starts muttering about black holes.) Today I worked more on the Georgina sweater. I darned in more ends, trimmed more yarn, finished off a few spots.
Damned if I can tell the difference. I swear I am not putting up the same photo over and over. You've been sucked into the zone with me.

The cat still wants to help out, either by laying on me as I try to knit (at fifteen pounds, if she's on my lap, there is room for NOTHING else), or whapping at the ends of the yarn as I pull them loose from the massive snarl that is my project.


I'm getting one more color of pink for the Fassett project; I knit my mother-in-law an Elsebeth Lavold sweater for Christmas last year, and gave her the leftover yarn. I am now demonstrating my generosity of spirit by asking for it back. She's gotten used to my utter lack of manners over the years, though, and is kindly dropping it in the mail. It should be here in time.

Today I cleared two thirty gallon trash cans full of leaf mold and pine needles out of the back yard, along with three thirty gallon recycling containers full of the same. (For those of you who live in Metric Land, that's about two and a half cubic meters.) This is in addition to the two thirty gallon trash cans full of trash that went out last week. You can't even tell. There is not a dent made in that back yard. (This project, too, is in the hideous nothing-happening middle phase). I really would leave the entire disaster for the landlord, but I've got a kid who is going to want to play back there in another six months (it's warm enough down here for almost year-round outside play), and we have all kinds of nasty bugs, including ticks with Lyme's Disease. (In fact, it's so nasty back there right now, I got chewed up last weekend and spent a few happy days waiting to see if I developed mysterious rashes or other worrysome symptoms.) I want to go back to Hawaii where all I had to worry about was Dengue Fever. (Yeah, yeah, I am joking.) At any rate, the back yard is a hole and I'm not thrilled with the landlord. Shoveling leaf mold cuts into my knitting time, and my hand is useless when I'm finished.

One good thing did happen this weekend. The Tax Sweater got side seams. There IS a seam there, right in the middle. It's invisible, because I am the Queen of Mattress Stitch. I rock. Yay me.

I'll give you wool if you shovel out my back yard for me.