Miscellaneous.

Sorry about the skip yesterday... it was a bad day. It's never a good day when you bleed on the floor. There was minimal pain and no life lost, and I'll spare y'all the gory details, but it was a bad day.

Anyway, there was a whole pile of stuff I was going to mention, and I'll probably forget half of it, but here goes.

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I got a package in the mail Monday (the husbeast is definitely getting jealous), and it turned out to be a lovely note and some very cool yarn (fluffy pink with sparkles) from Cindy, thanking me for hosting the steek-along. She's very welcome, and it's very kind to send a note and a gift. Thank YOU, Cindy.

Is it common to send a note and gift to the host of a knit-along? Am I behind in knitting etiquette, or do I just have exceptionally nice, generous participants?

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Speaking of knit-alongs, we'll be doing the Strikke-along, starting October first. I'll open up signups at the beginning of September, but I'm reminding everyone now, in case they have to budget for yarn, like I do. The point of the Strikke-along is to be inclusive; everyone who wants to join, join. I'm serious. We'll find some way to call any project you're doing related to Scandinavia, somehow. Or maybe you have Scandinavian ancestors (or ARE Scandinavian), or your knitting needles come from Norway, or something. We'll figure it out.

I've also cooked up the knit-along for late winter, already. Or rather, one of the regular readers has, and we're going to try to run it out of here. It should be a crazy one, so brace yourselves. I'm going to keep it mysterious so you all get curious.

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The Baby has moved on to verbs. "Hop" is the first one she learned, that I know of. Next up, compound sentences. She's also begun arguing, of the yes-no-yes-no-yes variety. For fun. She'll walk up and start saying 'no', for no good reason, and giggle when you say 'yes' back. She varies with 'nope' and 'nuh-uh' for a change of pace.

I see some really fun teen years on the horizon. Ha.

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Eunny Jang is back. Her blog, See Eunny Knit, has been shut down - or at least, the comments have been turned off and she's said she won't be posting there any more. But she's leaving it up for everyone, which is kind, because there's a pile of great info over there. Her new blog is being run from the Interweave web site (stands to reason), and she says she plans to treat it like an extended letter from the editor. We'll see. Unless she's got something in her contract, I bet she'll be doing more great tutorials before long. She's also on Ravelry as EunnyJang. Yay!

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So, this crochet thing. It's supposed to be fast, isn't it? That's what I always heard about it, from people who preferred it over knitting. Comments like "Oh, knitting's nice, but I don't have the patience for it, I can crochet an afghan in nothing flat." I assume, like everything else, the speed comes with practice, because I am slower than a lame turtle right now. (Using really splitty yarn isn't helping things a damn bit.)

I figured out that what I have been doing when I bind off lace, I THINK, is chain stitching (knew that), with slip stitches (didn't know that). We get paid today, so I may go out and buy a BOOK on the subject, tonight.

You know I'm serious when I buy a book about it.