It rained last night.

But not for long. It just got steamy and sticky after. But I will say, South Carolina knows how to RAIN.


That's the view from my front porch. (Forgive that bare patch by the drive; we killed a massive fire-ant nest there about a month ago.) The sparkly white things in the air? Rain drops. That's right. It's not quite up there with the golf-ball sized rain drops in Hawaii, where it felt like you were getting hit in the head with a hammer, but still, that's pretty respectable. If only the rain had lasted more than ten minutes, it might have cooled things off. But no. We're back to a heat index of six thousand degrees Kelvin out there. But, hey, Bush says there's no such thing as Global Warming so we must all be imagining it.

Ahem.

I went to the craft store today and picked up the sixteen inch size one needle I need, to start the Blue Shimmer. I got to checkout and the lady says "Oh, knitting socks?" and I said "Uh, no... a sweater." and she gave me a Gravely Concerned look and proceeded to check me out in silence, shooting me worried looks when she thought I wasn't paying attention.

My work on the Blue Shimmer is math, at the moment, involving things like "increase by 33% to a number of stitches with a multiple of 7". (So as to fit the pattern repeats in.) I had the husbeast on the phone for "Increase by 20% for a number that's a multiple of 6 AND 8." I figured it out myself (432), and that kind of scares me. (I was never good at the numerators devisors multiples thingies.) The numbers I'm playing with scare me too. Cast-on is 207 stitches. The body circumference is something like 450 (my notes are in the other room). This is either going to be totally cool or a complete disaster. I'm not sure which, yet. (Oh, and I think I forgot to mention -- gauge is 9.5 stitches to the inch.)

Last night we went out and bought some baby gates and came home and put them up. The reaction from the four-legged creatures has been interesting. The baby crawls to one, kind of goes "Well, shoot." and goes somewhere else, not making a big issue of it. The cat (who is a very healthy six-ish years old and MORE than capable of jumping over the damn things) has reacted like she's suddenly been thrown into a prison camp. You'd think we stuck her in a shoe box from the way she's carrying on. She stands at the gates and meows like she wants an elevator. Idiot cat.

Anyway, I just took my blood pressure medication (which makes me dopey) and now have to go find a number increased by 13% and divisible by 27. Or something. And it all has to come out to 590 when I'm done.