Running Around

Today is a Running Around kind of day. This morning after dropping off my son at daycare I picked up our cleaning woman & we went back home to clean the house for an hour & a half. Sounds very la-di-da, doesn't it? What if I tell you that our official Cleaning Woman is 15 years old, the oldest daughter of our home-daycare provider & that she did the vaccuuming and dusting while I did the bathroom cleaning, the floor washing, the sweeping & the taking-out-the-garbage -ing?

Yeah, not so glamorous. But damn, my ducks, if my house isn't CLEAN - and as we've arranged to try this out every Friday for a month or two it's going to stay that way for at least a little bit. What a lovely thing to wake up to on a Saturday morning after a hard week's work!

Once at work I worked for 2 hours on the desk, then went for a 45 minute walk in 81 degree heat (ah, thank you back-up deodorant stashed in my desk!) , then drove home to get the dog, then to the vet's, then back home to drop off the dog, then back to work. (It takes 1 hour do do this, unfortunately.) And now I'm here at work for all of 45 minutes before I go to meet Kim for our twice-weekly knitting meeting.

Yes, indeed, you all SHOULD feel sorry for me! LOL.

Happily my weekend will be much calmer - tomorrow AM I'm springing for breakfast at our favorite place - Panera Bread Company - after which we are going to load up our trailer with two loads of compost (one for friends who are trailer-less and one for me) and then I head off to work (ahem, to KNIT) for 4 hours in a peaceful, air-conditioned library. After that, who knows? Fun and revelry with The Munchkin and Peggers. Sunday - on Momma's Day - I'm going to ask for yet another Panera breakfast (hey, a girl has her preferences!) and then we spread out the compost on the garden & cut some oak plywood for the built-in bookshelves we're going to install the weekend after next. All Glamor All The Time - that's the motto here at Chez Pointy Sticks!!!

I have been having some absolutely FANTASTIC e-mail exchanges lately that I just have to clue you in on. First, from my To:Sockpal (i.e. the one that I am mailing socks TO) - she is a sassy & hysterical thing, and I adore reading her blog and we've had these e-mails exchanges that just crack me up. I can't say too much about her for fear that I'll totally give it away, but she's also in the field of education which is fun, and has the mouth of a sailor, which I totally adore as well. She loves the colour pink and does NOT like any shades of yellow, which totally threw me for a bit, as I'm definitely NOT a pink sort of girl, but I did some scouting and looking and have come up with some majorly beautiful options for her socks (and again, I'm knitting these in a slightly shorter version, in case you don't remember...).....................which leads me to my second set of e-mails that I've been loving lately.

Jessie (as in Jessie from 'What Housework?') was a top choice of mine all along to do the hand-dying for this yarn, as I've already scored - what - about 5 or 6 skeins of Gryphon's sockyarn and while I just LOVE it I figured I really should branch out & not be a greedy pig and take all of her stash. (Altho' reading her most recent post it appears that as she has a whopping 25 pounds of un-dyed sock yarn there might actually be more than enough for everyone to get some at the moment!) So I shot Jessie a heads-up e-mail some time back to see if this prospect would be okay with her, and sure enough - she was up for the challenge. Of course, with such an amazingly beautiful yarn studio just opening up for her to work in, I don't blame her at being interested in an excuse to play around in there!!!! So yesterday Jessie and I had this huge e-mail exchange about colour and fiber and suchlike - and the upshot of it was that I finally settled on this luxurious sounding merino/bamboo/nylon blend that she just got in (sooo soft and perfect for spoiling my sock pal!) in a host of subtle pinks. These are the pictures that I e-mailed Jessie to give her the gist of what I was talking about/thinking of:

(The beaded Tilli Thomas skein is probably my favorite, but the coiled Pink Posies is also lovely, and the Handmaiden Rose is beautiful too, and I also love the shocking silkiness of the hot pink T. Thomas as well.....all beautiful shades!)

Despite the fact that I'm not a pink girl I'm seriously getting wired-ly excited about these. There's something about the ultra-feminine shades that I think we're going to end up with here, with just that tiny wee bit of sassy sexiness mixed in (not to mention the fishnet-stocking-seam invoking lace windows that go right up the back of the leg!) plus the soft and silky yarn that is - hopefully - going to make these socks true winners. I figure heck, anyone who works in the educational field (and people, let me tell you without going into surprise-revealing-detail that this woman isn't just an educator, she's an Educator!) needs some pure luxury every now and then......

Even better is the fact that I've started Chart #2 on my Icarus, which means that the end is officially Within Sight, so despite the fact that the rows just keep getting looooonger and loooonger every time, I'm excited and having a lot of fun with that particular knit. Plus knowing that some huge bundles (I asked Jessie to make about 700 yards of this for me, as my Pal has muscular calves & I'm making these almost-knee high & lord knows I don't want to run out!!!) of pink and silky goodness are making their way towards me in the next few weeks gives me extra incentive to finish the shawl ASAP!

And now - finally - my final e-mail happiness lately. Have you seen in the comments section the messages from my From:Sockpal? (I.e. the one who is making me [!!!] a pair of socks?) I had guessed this at an earlier comment of hers, but with her last post she cinched it - she's Foreign!

Do you guys know how much I **adore** foreign??? I have briefly lived in New Zealand, and I lived for a longer time in Botswana, Africa, and I used to live very close to the US/Canadian border and as such have a total love of All Things Canadian - so my suspicion that my From:Sockpal is from Canada (she mentions crossing the border with studied casualness - ooh! aahhh!!!) is just absolutely making my day. Nay - making my week! Not only is she foreign (ah - another person who sticks a "U" in the word 'colour'!) but she's also working really hard to produce a pair of sock that I'll like - how could she not be my new Bestest Pal as a result? Plus she's also in the educational field - what are the odds that both of my pals and myself all do the same thing, huh??????

That's it for me for now - off to meet with Kim to knit Icarus myself and to peek at her Gryphon Traveler sock (it's a thing of beauty!!!) and drink coffee. I will leave you with one last picture - I'm not nearly good enough to do an Eye Candy Friday every week, but this picture was taken 2 weeks ago with that end in mind, so here it finally is - a tree peony blossom from my back yard. Tree peonies typically take 5 years to bloom once they're planted, and the blooms are very ephemeral, but oh! Aren't they worth the wait and their limited delight??????