What's Happenin'?

Well, Sunday was a party day. I know, I know, you thought that two parties on Saturday should be enough for one weekend. Well, obviously not. Sunday was a birthday party for our favorite LA restaurant critic/blog queen/crochet maven/vintage-estate sale-thrift shop-lover. As part of the entertainment, she provided us with yummy food, TWO birthday cakes, and this amazing stack o' yarn. If you check on her post today, you can see the amazing Tower o' Squares that resulted. Although there were cries of surprise at Yours Truly holding a crochet hook, and actually CROCHETING a square, I have to say that I have done many many MANY miles of crochet in my crafty career. I was even able to do a granny square from memory. (OK, don't look too closely at that center--but hey, it's done!) Mmm, those chocolates didn't last very long, either. They were the reason I needed to go for a loooooonnnnggg walk last night!
I didn't take very good pictures of the gift opening--had my camera on the wrong setting, and everything came out blurred--so I am just going to share this one with you:

A gorgeous crocheted vintage tablecloth/shawl. Absolutely mind-boggling!

Gratuitous kitty picture courtesy of Mr. Highland who obligingly posed on the diner quilt.

Mondays are for knitting in Montrose, twice a month. Today was the dreaded Unraveling of the CPH sleeves--the caps had somehow gotten rather misshapen. Sigh. So I persuaded the Knit Devil to haul hers along and we had an Encouragement Day. While she attempted to pick up almost 400 stitches onto a 24" needle, I did some math. Recounted and did more math. Ripped. Recounted. Ripped some more. With a lot more encouragement from KD and Coffee Patty, I finally got the count right. Sleeves now have armpit bindoffs, and are ready to start the cap decreases. Hopefully this time they won't look like arrow points! Oh, and those picked up stitches? With a couple of extra Options cords, KD managed to get them picked up. Many thanks to MJ for helping us, too. Also to the staff of Coffee Bean for providing the arctic blasts necessary to work on this much wool in July! (Yeah, I'm one to complain; mine is in the Durango Yarns Colorado and considerably lighter in poundage than KD's Black Water Abbey. Hey, mine is 1/4 dryer lint, hers is all wool!)

Progress photo of the Rose Garden Shawl, which now contains one entire skein of Silk Rhapsody:

And another gratuitous kitty photo. Yes, I think my "baby" is gorgeous. When I woke up this morning, he was sleeping curled up around my copy of HP7 with one paw draped fetchingly over the book. Since I don't keep the camera in the bedroom, there was no way to get a picture for you, so you'll just have to imagine the fluffy cuteness, ok?

Party!

Sometimes, life decides to pile on the events. July 21 was one of those days. Not only was it the release date for Harry Potter 7 (yes, I'm a fan), it was also the date set for a couple of other events.
Garden party! Not like the ones HRH Queen Elizabeth throws, where hats and flowered dresses are the order of the day; this one was a housewarming party for Anne. You can read her take on her big move on her blog; and you can see more pictures from the party by clicking on my Flickr badge over there on the right. They're in a set called Anne's Party.
The setting was right out of one of those glossy home magazines--a lovely garden behind a charming Craftsman house.

Roses and all manner of flowering plants, a big tree with enormous puffs of yellow flowers, and lots of good company. And good food.
Anne got lots of neat things to help her start fresh in her new place.

Of course I had to include this pic of her talking to my Grandcarrot, his mom and auntie.

Yes, the color theme for the party was orange, purple, and lime green. With all the green grass and greenery, it looked festive and summery.

I followed that party up with another gathering, of folks who used to work together at That Internet Company. When we were all laid off, we started a Yahoo group for the "orphans" and have used that to keep in touch over the years. Saturday night we met at a Local Watering Hole not too far from our former employer, and got caught up and reminisced a bit. As George put it in his email to the group today: So many times people hug on the last day of work and say, "Let's keep in touch, let's get together" and then they never do. Not the case here, which is a testament to why E*** was such a great place to work at: a sense of family (not E*** the entity, but E*** the family -- each of us.)

I'm looking forward to more Orphans gatherings! And the next time I will bring my camera.

Then I went home and read the first three chapters of HP7. No comments here--except to say that it starts off in the middle of the action and gets better every page.

Today there's another party, this one a knitty kind of gathering, which I'm totally up for. I need me some fibery calm and good talk! Besides, knitting sessions tend to make good blog fodder.
Speaking of which, has anyone besides me noticed that blog posts have dropped drastically since people are spending so much time on Ravelry? It's given me a whole new incentive to photograph my yarn and projects and then upload them to Flickr and to Ravelry. Now, if I were actually to use the site to catalogue all my yarn, I'd probably crash it. No, I'd certainly crash it. Sigh. Guess that means I'll be thinning the stash as I go, which is a good thing. I haven't forgotten that this is The Year of Organization. (I haven't forgotten, I've just gotten lazy or heat-stroked...)