I spent last night knitting until 3:30 in the morning when I discovered I hadn’t packed the right quantity of yarn in the color I needed to finish a section. I’m home with the stash now and will be knitting until I have to leave for Meetup. I will then go back to knitting once I get home again.

And tomorrow — at lunch and after I get home? You guessed it — I’ll be knitting.

Friday on the car ride up to Connecticut? Knitting (at least when I’m not driving).

Sense a trend yet?

My (semi-self-imposed) deadline is Monday. But my time becomes severely curtailed come Sunday.

So keep your fingers crossed for me. I can’t knit cross-fingered, so I need all the help I can get.

No post yesterday. I was running around like a madwoman all day trying to get uncooperative pages to magically turn into pamphlets to take with me to focus groups in Pittsburgh this coming week.

Today marks the first day civil unions are legal in Connecticut. Congratulations to all those who are becoming legally united after prolonged periods of waiting. I wish you the best (and when I say best, I mean that I hope eventually that stupid politicians get off their butts and realize that their relationships are no more or less valid than yours and that your relationship, therefore, deserves equal protection under the law, not just different protection, which is what they have offered you now, as you well know).

Today is also our friend Mike’s birthday. I do not have Mike’s email address, or I would say this to him in an e-card. But as I don’t, his wife Shelley (who sometimes reads this blog) will just have to pass along our best wishes for a jam-filled, headache-free birthday weekend.

My plans for today center around relaxing. I have failed the first step — sleeping in. I don’t guarantee that I won’t return to bed, but that’s not really the same thing.

• I will shop — both at the Crafty Bastards arts and crafts fair up the road, where I hope to buy some Christmas presents, and at a grocery store, where I hope in exchange for some money they will give me something to outfit my larder. It’s been looking a bit Mother Hubbardish since we returned from England.
• I will walk. DC’s cultural office is offering a number of cool-sounding historical tours today that sound like they could be fun and informative. If I weren’t sick and in the middle of a frantic crafts project and between two plane flights, I might be adventurous and explore a neighborhood not my own, but as it stands, I think I’ll pick one of the offerings that stays nearby (Georgetown, Embassy Row, Eleanor Roosevelt’s DC life…).
• I will knit. I will knit a lot. This cold/flu/whatever has severely hampered my progress at a critical time. I still harbor delusions of finishing in time for next week’s deadline (thoughts enabled by knitting and non-knitting friends who have seen me beat innumerable deadlines in the past in just the nick of time), but I am rapidly running out of days (and people seem not to understand that I should knit instead of work this week).
• I will watch baseball. It is the final weekend of the regular season, and, while my team is out of contention (although they did admirably well and will end the season with a better-than-.500 record for the first time in a couple of years), Rudi’s team is not. The Sox and the Yankees face off to determine the supremacy of the AL East and whether they can continue to thumb their noses at each other in the post-season. If the Sox lose, I won’t take it personally. I grew up in Connecticut and have no disagreements with the Yankees, except when they play the Mets.

I think that sounds like a busy day, so I’m not going to do anything else (or, at least, plan to do anything else). Posting may be a bit haphazard this week, as I’ll have to do it at Kinko’s in Pittsburgh…

Today brings some good knitting news:

Two weeks ago I realized I’d screwed up the pattern on the project I’m knitting. Then later in the week, I thought I could salvage it from another end. Last weekend, it occurred to me that I might not be able to salvage it after all, but wouldn’t know until I checked with someone more knowledgable. Of course I didn’t realize this on a day my local yarn shop was open. So I moved that part of the project over to a spare needle (many thanks to Gramma and her random spare needles I could never figure out why I’d need) and started the part of the project I’d intended to be working on before.

The trip to the local yarn shop today was profitable in several ways. The girl working there (who also helped me last fall when I was trying to adapt a hat pattern and who taught me how to use double pointed needles) was able to tell me that my project would be fine and that I didn’t need to rip out all the rows I’d been working on. Thank goodness!

She also told me she had no idea what an overcast stitch was either and provided me with an alternative stitch to put the project together with when I eventually finish knitting it.

And she had in stock the knitting needle stopper that I wanted to buy so I wouldn’t lose parts of the project while traveling.

Never has $2.50 been so well spent!

Hooray for local yarn shops! And helpful salespeople!

Interestingly enough, sitting in a hosptial waiting room, while waiting for someone who is not too seriously injured and when there are no bloody patients being wheeled through, is very productive for knitting. Do you think Georgetown University Hospital would mind if I came back next week and brought my knitting then, too?

Yesterday I managed to convince Rudi that he really wanted to head north to West Friendship, Maryland, with me so he could ride his bike while I went to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.

It was a beautiful day — about 75 degrees with blue skies for a drive through the countryside. We arrived just after 3, leaving me with two hours to wander before the festival closed.

The festival is two-pronged. The first part is for producers — people who raise sheep, goats, llamas, alpacas, and angora rabbits. There are competitions and vendors who sell farm implements and things of that ilk. The other part is for consumers — those of us who use the producers’ goods.

I wandered first through some farmers’ booths, admiring walking sticks and handmade knitting needles, as well as a soft sheep and some humungous (and very friendly) angora bunnies.

Then past a competition of children with their sheep and woolen goods up to the alpacas and llamas. We strolled through a barn of sheep and into a couple of exhibit halls before Rudi decided to leave for his bike ride.

I strolled leisurely through the rest of the exhibition halls, feeling a vast variety of yarns and looking for something specific to finish a project I’m working on. I didn’t find it, but I did find:

Homemade lemonade

Giant eclairs (at a cutrate deal — 2 for $5)

A woolen ball for the cats to play with (it should be noted here that I debated this purchase for a while because I wasn’t sure whether it was good to encourage the cats to play with something made of the same material I make things out of, but clearly Posey (seen below) and Jeremiah feel I made the right decision.)

Size 35 needles for a shawl knit of the beautiful mohair Mum gave me for Christmas (The needles are 14″ long, I think, and wider than my fingers. They have fun lavender with polka dots balls on the top and are made by hand from poplar.)

500 yards of gorgeous apricot mohair/fine wool blend yarn (The current plan is to make a Christmas present from it, but I don’t swear I won’t keep it for myself.)

I headed south through rolling hills to Wheaton, where I finally caught up with Rudi after his bike ride. Both of us had a jolly time and the plan for next year is to bring both bikes and arrive earlier in order to make a day of it.

According to God in tonight’s Joan of Arcadia, “Knitting is the new yoga,” citing its meditative properties. Rudi noted that knitting doesn’t give you the muscles that yoga does. I laughed and asked, “Did you ever notice muscle tone on me when I was doing yoga regularly?” “No,” he admitted. “At least with knitting,” I added, “I get visible results.”