1. Teiwice this week I habve founds myself outside at dusjk. Omn ,Momhjm,nday UI caiught the a crescenyt miioon over Rsossluuyn from the Geotrgetown waterfront. Tonuight it was the last nubmiuiomevnts of coloor diasappearimmnhg from nbeyond ythe Baltuinbmiore GHarbotr.

[Ahem. This was typed with my left hand while balancing the roly-poly Corey on my lap and propping him up with my right. Obviously what it says is: “Twice this week I have found myself outside at dusk. On Monday I caught a crescent moon over Rosslyn from the Georgetown waterfront. Tonight it was the last movements of color disappearing from beyond the Baltimore Harbor.” Honestly, it was just too funny not to share the original after Corey freed up my right hand.]

2. Rudi joins me in Baltimore after work. While our pizza is not of New Haven quality, our cannoli (from Vaccaro’s, the same bakery that used to have a stand at D.C.’s Union Station) rivals Libby’s, which is the highest compliment I can pay to Italian delicacies.

3. Another knitter and I were exchanging emails and she happened to mention that one of the socks we’d made during last spring’s Sock Madness had really helped her finesse her grafting skills. After replying that that sock had been my undoing in the competition (yes, it was the first one; so what?) and that, in fact, it had been sitting on my desk untouched since March, I pulled out the baggie and tried the completed sock on. When I had put the socks away, I had been up all night on a cross-country flight trying to finish the pair, was exhausted, and was in Salt Lake where my allergies drive all my senses into overdrive. The socks had an unusual construction and I had felt seams bunching in uncomfortable ways in spots where that would be sure to cause blisters. After I failed to finish by the deadline, I shoved the socks into a baggie and figured I’d have to undo some grafting and maybe frog the socks some. Some day. But on Saturday I realized it had merely been my state of mind (and/or health) that had put these socks into time out. I took them out of sock purgatory and am on my way to a weekend completion of a new pair of socks.

What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

Each time I think I have it figured out which colors I’d like to pair for my Neptune High knee socks, I flip flop.

Current dilemma:

• Red and tangerine?
• Tangerine and deep blue?
• Deep blue and teal green?

Hey, you think that’s bad? I ruled out a whole chair’s worth of other color combinations earlier tonight.

As noted earlier in the week, I’m taking part in a swap on Ravelry. Before I could send my package off to Germany, though, I had to make something for my recipient.

I debated between a hat or a cowl and eventually settled on a hat out of the new Knitty that came out at the end of last month:

This is Brambles, knit in the Violet colorway of Shepherd’s Wool from Stonehedge Fiber Mill, a yarn grown, spun, and dyed here in the U.S. I hadn’t heard of this yarn when Rudi and I stopped by Fibre Space a few weeks ago, but the store’s owner really sold it on me and I’m so glad she did. The yarn is quite delightful to work with and at $10 a skein, it’s actually an affordable worsted weight yarn worth looking at if you were considering a sweater.

The pattern also was lovely, and I would knit it again. In fact, since I really want one of my own, it’s all but certain that I will.

When I came up with my goal of finishing five pairs of socks during Socktoberfest ’10, I didn’t know we were going to end up with a sick cat and that it was going to send me into an emotional tailspin. I might also have forgotten that I needed to make a homemade item for a swap. Oops.

But the good thing about a recurring event and setting yourself up for a win is that you can have finished knitting a pair of socks but not yet have woven in the ends and if you save that part for the first few days of October, you have successfully completed a pair of socks during Socktoberfest.

Ahem.

Anyway…

I have been knitting these socks off and on since mid-May. I know I knit on the first one during ALA in June. I had the second one in progress when I was last in Connecticut in August.

The pattern is Badcaul and the yarn is Dicentra Designs in Solar Energy, both of them sent to me by Carola as part of the Yarn Aboard 2 swap back in 2006. The yarn held up remarkably well to being frogged at least twice in my earlier attempts to knit this cabley pattern.

Those of you who were at Conn back in the first half of the ’90s may find they remind you of something. I tried to track down a photo of Spot, Min’s striped van, but didn’t have any luck. Suffice it to say, there is more than a passing resemblance in the colors.

[Finally, thanks to Natasha Brenchley, who created this year’s Socktoberfest banner and is letting folks use it for their blog posts.]

Last week was not all awfulness, since this package arrived for me in the mail. I have participated in the Favorite Things swaps on Ravelry before and am always excited to get packages filled with someone else’s favorite things in the mail.

Cassandra took great care of me, and I find we have many favorite things in common. She likes chocolate. I like chocolate. She likes tea. I like tea! She likes cookies — and really delicious oatmeal chocolate almond cherry cookies, at that. I like cookies and ate the whole package up! (Okay, I may have shared them with Rudi. He had a crappy week last week, too, after all.)

And, of course, we both like yarn. Cassandra sent me lovely indigo blue sock yarn made of merino, cashmere, and nylon that I believe she dyed herself. And then she sent me two patterns for socks to knit.

It really was a terrific package to receive last week when I was feeling so low. Thanks, Cassandra!

It’s been a rough week here in the Burrow and I just haven’t really felt up to talking about it. But tradition is the sort of thing that shouldn’t be messed with, so here are the usual Thursday Three Beautiful Things from my week past:

1. It was obvious that Della was getting weaker and weaker and I confess that I spilled many tears both before and after taking her to the vet, anticipating from past experience that she would not be coming home. But with the help of a caring vet clinic, some fluids, and a number of medicines, we got a call Tuesday that said we could pick her up and bring her back to the Burrow. Rudi and I are not natural nurses, but we do love our eldest cat tremendously and she is forgiving of our awkwardness. The barrage of medicines doesn’t offer us forever, but they do offer us all some additional time together, which we plan to spend snuggling.

2. Crossing the Taft Bridge up to Woodley Park last night, I note that a few trees below me in Rock Creek Park are beginning to be tipped with yellow and one or two with red. The sun perches just atop those on the horizon before it slips behind them for the night.

3. I finish a knitting project and block it (stretch it out a bit to even out the stitches) on a dinner plate. It ends up looking as cool as I hoped it would, and my fingers are crossed that the recipient will like it, too.