When did that new year sneak in here?

I was up to my ears in finish-itis, so no posting on Friday or Saturday. But Lark’s shawlette is done and awaiting its rendezvous with my yoga mat, a pile of towels, and two boxes of pins. And the color below is reasonably close.



I used up 91% of the yarn, which leaves a ball of yarny goodness a little larger than a golf ball. It has gone into my gallon Ziploc bag with the other remnants of laceweight yarn, to be turned into something dollish in the future. That was my last conscious act, last night.

And my first conscious act, this morning, was to rendezvous with my umbrella swift and ball winder and turn six hanks of yarn into this:



What I am envisioning is something like the Noro cowl I made for Lark last Christmas, where I cast on from both ends of two balls, a quarter of the stitches with each end, and knitted until I ran out of yarn. This time I am thinking of casting on one-sixth of the stitches in each yarn and working in a spiral until something runs out, then binding off with one of the non-mohair yarns at the top.

Next step is to play with the color arrangement until I have a lively alternation that does not clump the three balls with nearly identical values all together. In terms of size, I think I have enough yarn that I can make the bottom edge come out nearly to my shoulders, and if I knit it on what are [for me] oversize needles, possibly the size 7 circ I just used for Lark’s shawlette, I will get a loopy, fluid fabric that drapes nicely about my neck and upper chest.

The actual yarn is much greener than what you see here, something like an electric version of the jade of the mid-1980’s. As usual, my sister batted this one clean out of the ballpark!

I mentioned getting two gift cards. One from a co-worker, with which I bought this organizer and rounded out my collection of crochet hooks:



And one from the new guy, with which I bought a miniature trunk ~



~ cool clasp, no? To hold doll clothes ~



~ which I bought from Fourthborn; she had me at petticoat. I will study it within an inch of its life and use it as a template to make similar petticoats for the other girls. Speaking of which, there’s a new kid in town:



Her name is Honor. As in “return with”. She’s the size between Celeste and Faith, and she is in serious need of restringing, but even all floppy she’s beautiful. I look forward to knitting a sweater for her, and that will have to wait until I finish Faith’s outfit. Which will have to wait until I do a quick pick-up in my studio now that all the Christmas creating and birthday creating is over.

But some of you do not come here for knitting news or doll news. Some of you want to know how it went at the dance on New Year’s Eve. Breathe easy, I’m ambling in that general direction.

First, some technology news. I bit the bullet and bought myself a new printer on Friday, only to find out after getting it mostly set up that it has the new-style cable to make it speak to my computer. Which is old-style, and has no USB ports. No, not one. So I had to email my printouts to myself and to Secondborn, and she printed them off for the dance, and I got my bulletin board decorated.

It occurred to me in the wee hours yesterday morning, while I was working on the short-rows on Lark’s shawlette, that no USB ports means my new iPod cannot speak to my computer, either. But 2BDH thinks he can rig something up.

The new printer is seriously cool: it prints, it faxes, it copies, and it scans. Or it will, once we solve that pesky connection problem. So I will be able to gather up all sorts of records and scan them and shred them, which is something I’ve wanted to do for a good long while.

OK, OK, the dance. I had a very good time. Saw a lot of people I don’t usually see at the dances, got to hug a lot of friends and visit and eat too much party food and yes, dance some too. Two members of the new stake presidency were there. One of the counselors gave a few opening remarks to welcome us. And later on the stake president and his wife graced us. That is not a snarky comment; they are two of my favorite people in this stake, even lovelier on the inside than they are on the outside, and they are truly a handsome couple.

Had several nice conversations with the new guy during the course of the evening; we sat at the same table but were both up and around, visiting and dancing, sometimes even with each other. There was only one other petri dish at the dance that night, but in his car on the drive over, were the ex-petri, the wannabe-petri, and the non-petri for whom there is no room at the lab table.

I will confess to feeling the merest smidgen of envy when he was dancing with the other petri dish, but I got up and asked a friend to dance, instead of sitting there feeling sorry for myself. He came charging up to the table a hair before midnight with a glass of sparkling cider for me, for the toast, apologizing for having been waylaid. And by that time I was long past my fifteen-second pity party, and we danced some more while waiting for breakfast to be served.

When he and his passengers were ready to leave, so I was I, and I played pilot-fish to get them back to the freeway more efficiently than they had arrived. [The online map lied. What can I say?] At which point I went north for home, and they went east, just sufficiently delayed to be held up by a really bad accident on Central Expressway for an hour and a quarter, when if they had been five minutes earlier they might well have been part of it.

And now it is 7:15, and I have church at 9:00 and no idea what I’m wearing, or what I’m taking for church knitting, so I had better go figure something out. I am really going to miss my Sunday morning naps this year.