I love Excel.

I sat down with a bright shiny new spreadsheet, the weight of the remaining yarn, the knowledge of where I was in the pattern, and calculated just how-much-too-much pattern would be left to work, after I ran out of yarn on the current stealth project. (I bought the only ball of its color at the yarn shop.)

I needed another fourteen percent. Would eliminating two pattern repeats be enough to make up the difference? Almost, but not quite. Taking out four pattern repeats would do the trick. At which point it was time to frog thirteen days’ worth of knitting, without losing any of those beads. So I took a nap, instead.

And then I tackled it. Grabbed the wide, shallow bowl in which I serve spaghetti when I’m feeding the tribe, slid the needle out of the stitches, retrieved the stitch markers, and started frogging. Half an hour or so later, I was down to the last two rows. Another half hour or so to carefully pick up the cast-on row and dislodge the remaining beads, only a few of which flew out of the bowl and onto the floor. I think I found them all. The yarn is rewound and resting in a nice, loose ball. The beads are waiting to join the party when I start knitting again.

I celebrated with another [far shorter] nap, until it was time for my evening meds. Then I put the stealth project which I finished earlier this month, to soak in preparation for blocking. Wish I could show you what it looks like, but I am seriously impressed. This was my first time to knit with 100% stealth-project-fiber, and it knits like a dream and appears to stay put when blocked; i.e., details are not lost once the pins are taken out.

Ran out and got a few groceries: milk, more Puffs, white tic-tacs to take with me to the temple and pop into my pocket, by which I hope to minimize or eliminate my coughing. A pint of Ben and Jerry’s, and it’s a measure of how crummy I have been feeling, that I only ate a modest, sane portion before popping the rest of it into the freezer.

I did some quiet, but serious, puttering yesterday. Lots and lots of much-needed shredding. I frisked the May and June 2010 pages from my old organizer for things like receipts and extra pages, put them with the rest of the pages, and bound up that year with a ribbon, as I had done for 2006-2007, 2007-2008, and 2008-2009. In the May section I found a small paper bag containing two small buttons that I think I bought at Shabby Sheep last year to turn into earrings. They are made from smallish discs of shell, with two holes along one edge, to be used as paillettes in one’s knitting. I looked at my sterling split-rings, but the 4mm’s are just a wee bit too small to both reach the edge and allow space for a larger ring, to which the French hooks would attach.

Oh drat, this means I shall have to make a field trip to The Artful Bead. Whatever shall I do?

Time to get ready to drive to Dallas. My bishop will not be there with the rest of the ward, after all. One of his college-age children has come home for the weekend. So the new guy will have a slightly less gauntlety gauntlet to run. And he has promised me Asian food for lunch.