Rebuilding Greensburg KS A Stash Bustin' Opportunity

But first, Happy Mother's Day.

Although I live in TX now, I grew up in OK just 10 miles south of the KS, so in my mind this is close to home. We had tornados then and still do where I am now, so there but for the grace of God go I.

http://specialstuff.typepad.com/sugar_bunny_boulevard/2007/05/rebuilding_gree.html#comment-69137552

Sugarbunny is coordinating or helping to coordinate Rebuilding Greensburg...Block by Block. You knit an 8" block and send it to El Dorado First Baptist Church and they'll seam them together and provide finished blankets to families.

The good news for me is they specifically requested wool and I have lots of scraps of that.

This is the first crazy combination I put together. I'm not quite half done with the square. With any luck and some knitting tonight I will be able to mark this photo stash busted.

I don't know how much yarn I'm going to need, but as you can see I weighed it all and will know when I finish one square.

I was about to cast on Mad Weave from sockmadness, but this is more important.

Holey Cow!

Yes, that's a hole in my Mad Cow sock. I was several repeats gone before I found this hole. It was the result of a dropped stitch. I managed to wrangle it. It's rigged that's for sure, but I wasn't about to tink or frog back 3".

Since I carried on after darning the hole, I was able to finish the socks. Not too shabby. I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out. Interestingly, the heel on the second isn't as snug as the heel on the first. I like the feel of the first heel better so I need to go back and take a look and consider adjusting the count down a bit.

This is all the yarn I had left. 30gms of the one on the left and less than 10gms of the one on the right. I'm glad to have some leftover. I really like how the colorways worked out. I want to try to figure out the pattern so I can mimic it in my own dyed sock yarn.

And this picture was taken on our lovely, new hardwood floors. What a nightmare, but finally done.

Finally We Have Real Progress

I'm just going to jump in with the good news. We have real progress today on the floors. We are on our third contractor, but there are real planks of wood nailed down. And we are loving it.

This is what workers look like. They come to your house and they do a project. They get there in the morning and they work until evening. Our previous contractor came about 2pm and left around 4pm or he came at 11am and left at 2pm.

The previous contractor also used my counter top as a place to do math. It's a blurry picture, but it gets the point across. It wiped right off, but come on.

These are workmen's tools. And you know they are coming back to finish the job when they leave their stuff.

It ain't over til the trim is on, but I really think it might come together this time. We've been through 4 weeks of concrete floors, 3 contractors and we are $1,200 over the original estimate, but it's all going to be worth it in the end. We are actually in the process of negotiating $400 with the second contractor because that's the extra amount we are paying the third contractor to fix and finish the job.

I will say all these contractors came with recommendations. In fact, the guy that recommend the last two feels so bad about the second one, he has offered to pay the difference. I'm in hopes Willie with come through and do the right thing. He didn't spend that much time here and didn't put that much effort into the job. But who knows.

I'm going to try to knit with my injured finger. I have no idea what happened, maybe it was excessive knitting.

12 Rounds of Knitting

De La Hoya and Mayweather style. We had a group of people over to watch the fight last night. I knit on the Mad Cow sock (because I don't care that much about boxing and women are multi-taskers anyway) and added about 2" to the top of the sock. A couple of more sessions with that kind of progress and this baby is finished.

I haven't cast on the Mad Weave like I thought I might, but I'm feeling so good about the Mad Cow I kind of hate to lose my stride.

Sopranos are on tonight. I'm not sure about knitting while I watch it. You kind of have to pay attention, but then again it's available on-demand so I can always watch it again later.

Mad Cow Progress - Finally

I've turned the heel on the second mad cow sock and feel like I'm finally making progress. The instep is always the long, boring part for me. (I guess because I have a big foot.) But now that I'm on the upper part, I have a renewed spirit to finish this sock.

I've discovered I kind of like the short row heel. I don't even mind wrapping and picking up the wrapped stitches. I think I prefer that to having to pick up all those stitches when you do the heel flap. This way when I'm finished with the heel I just start knitting again. I also like the idea that you could do a contrasting heel if you wanted.

The only thing about the short heel that kind of bugs me are the points. From this angle the heel looks a little like a bonnet. For this pattern I did 14 wrap stitches on each side and 14 stitches unwrapped in the middle. I wonder if I only did 12 stitches in the middle if it would stop the points? Probably it would just relocate them.

Some people don't like the fit of the wrapped heel. It works fine for me. I guess because I have a flat foot. No high instep for me. This picture is a little misleading, it actually looks like I have some arch. Must be the angle.

I should have made these notes when I did my first Mad Cow sock, but I didn't so I will document now. Cast on was 66. I did the heel over 42 stitches. 14 wrapped stitches on each side and 14 stitches in the middle of the heel.

I also wish I had weighed the yarn prior to doing the heel and after so I would know how much yarn the heel used. I think it would be fun to use up left over yarn on the heels and toes, but you need to know you have enough yarn. Oh well another day.

This is the latest addition to my stash. Two skeins out 1 skein in. It's Cherry Tree Hill Loden. Yum. I bought a solid so I can knit a lace sock with a leaf motif. One pattern I found in "More Sensational Knitted Socks" really struck me, but it's done on a purl background. I don't know if I have the patience to basically purl an entire sock. But there are lots of other leaf type patterns out there. I even found one in my "Gathering of Lace" book.

While I'm looking for the perfect leaf pattern for the loden yarn, I'm going knit my CTH Nothern Lights into the Mad Weave from Sock Madness. I'm pretty excited about getting into something that's a little tougher than straight stockinette.

All my other pending projects are lace shawls and scarves. Socks and shawls, it's an interesting mix.

Meanwhile Back on the Home Front

When I said I hoped to come home from my trip to wood floors, this isn't exactly what I meant.

This is the plywood subfloor, but it is forward progress.

This is a start on the tile entry (do you call it an entry if its at the back of the house?) Since I couldn't match the white tile in the kitchen, I went decidedly different. This is an 8" travetine (cobblestone noce) that we are going to enhance with an enhancer. The tile is set at a 45 degree angle. No matchy-matchy here. The tile will be in the same color family and value (hopefully) as the wood. It will be a nice transition from the pool. And it will give me that space I need to scream, "get outside if you are still wet." "Don't drip on the hardwoods." "Go through the garage to get to the bathroom." You get the picture.

I do have knitting news. I will write about that later.

Time to Take Inventory

I've been part of the Yarn Destash-A-Long for 5 months now. It's time to take inventory and see where we are. And perhaps to inventory finished objects to date.

I'm not going to go over all my stash again. That's covered in a previous entry. But here is a picture of four items that have been destashed.

Top left is turning (not quite finished) into a pair of socks from Sock Madness. I have one done and really hope to finish that on my current out of town trip.

Top right, turned into a lovely pair of Koigu socks.

Bottom left is turned into an over-the-top-Dr.-Suess-type-way-too-long scarf. I had a lot of fun with that.

And the bottom right picture felted into a mess. The purse I wanted to make flopped big time. Although I don't count it as a finished object, the stash is still busted.

Now there was some stash I didn't even realize I had when I was taking photo inventory. It turned into 9 hats for kids with cancer. I don't find the pic of all of them together at this moment, but they look something like this. I destashed a ton of fun fur and cotton yarn.

Here's a list just for my own gratification:

• 1-9 fun fur or cotton hats
• 10 a super long wool scarf
• 11-12 two pairs of felted clogs for the boys
• 13 Koigu socks
• 13.5 the first of two blue socks.

Not too shabby. I still have enough stash for 3 more pairs of socks. I like the Mad Weave from sock madness and think it will go very well with my CTH stash

But I'm not sure I'm in the mood for more socks. I'm thinking it's time for some lace. A Shetland Tea Shawl from A Gathering of Lace (yarn - got it) or maybe the Linen Lace Beaded Shawl I bought yarn for the last time I was in MN. Yup I could knit this whole year and not buy any new yarn, but I'm not advocating that. In fact, if I have time while I'm here, I'm going yarn shopping.

The GP Bark Park

Since I'm getting no knitting done, my knitting blog has turned into a regular blog.

Today I took Baby Girl to the Grand Prairie Bark Park. It's an off-leash dog park that opened yesterday. At least officially opened yesterday. This is a picture of her playing with a new friend. Sunny is 5-months-old and, if it's possible, had more energy than she did.

It is so nice to have a social animal after years of my two completely anti-social cats. BG thinks everyone loves her and usually they do. She ran and ran and just had the best time playing with the other dogs.

The park is very nice. There's gravel and grass. They have water fountains for people and pooches. And shaded benches for the parents. Thankfully they separate the big dogs from the little dogs. There were some really big dogs on the other side of the fence. And they were really playing.

We stayed for about an hour. I will definitely take her back.

About Ready to Get On With Life

I'm about ready to get on with life. Work hopefully won't be so crazy and come Monday they are going to start laying our wood floors - out of the boxes and onto the floor. This is what our house has looked like for the last week. There's another section of boxes of floors behind where I'm standing, but I think you get the picture.

I'm excited to have found all the beads I need for the beaded linen shawl. It may be time to start stringing the beads. I have another trip coming up to Minneapolis. If I haven't by then finished up the second mad cow sock, then I definitely will on that trip. Then I can move on to some lace. Or at least a sock that's a little more of a challenge.

We Bought the Flooring

Marshall and I were able to decide on a flooring. I got real wood and he got rustic and it's in our budget. We still haven't found anyone to put it down for us. We've considered doing it ourselves. However, we figured we are going to live here a long time so we should make sure we love it. And if we mess it up, who do we call to come fix it? This is the kind you either glue down or it's nailed down. Not really the kind of project you want to cut your teeth on.

Our neighbor across the street owns a construction company and he has a "flooring guy." He's going to have him give us an estimate. Here's hoping we're still friends after the transaction. Whatever extent that may be.

Right now the living room is littered with wood "getting acclimated." 40 boxes of wood flooring. If things were bad last week with bare concrete, it's really bad now with a jungle laying on the floor. I'll post a picture later. It's too dark right now.

I need to keep things in perspective. Compared to two months in the Budget Suites this is a walk in the park (or forest.) It can't go on forever. And I do feel better now that we have the flooring purchased. That was a big hurdle.

I was a big crank yesterday. I didn't want to do anything. I didn't want to stay home, I didn't want to go shopping. I didn't want to get out of bed, but I didn't want to stay in bed. The list of things I didn't want to do just went on and on.

But I needed some black capris, no I really had to have them for a work thing. So I had to go shopping. Something that should have made the day even better was a $100 gift card from Nordstroms. And...a Nordstrom's Rack. After I went to the big store and bought the pants I had to have, I went to "the Rack" and spent the balance of the card. I bought a pair of black capris, some pajama bottoms and a pair of black sandals for $101.61. This should have made me feel good, but I didn't want to be happy.

I'm happy with my purchases today though. I have a feeling I'm going to be pretty cute at work tomorrow. I'm really glad yesterday is over.

Work has blown pretty bad for the last couple of weeks, but I found out Thursday that I was promoted to director. Pretty exciting news. Not that that solves any of the crap, but like the floors and Budget Suites, it can't go on forever. And it kind of makes it worth it to know you are appreciated.

Yeah, I'm feeling much better today. PTL.

We Almost Got Wood Floors

But as for now all we have is exposed concrete.

The long story:

We moved into this house in August and we love it. We've been fortunate not to have to deal with real issues. We did resurface the pool and put in new windows, but overall when we flip the switch, or turn the knob stuff works.

There are lots of nice details that Linda put in that I would have never spent money on like the chandalier in the dining room. It's very sparkly and I fell in love with it the minute I saw it. Several of the windows have wooden shutters on them and now I "have" to make the rest of the house match. Love the shutters, would probably never have done it on my own. She also put tile in the formal living area and the formal dining area and she has re-done the cabinets. They are white, which I love. At the same time, the carpet in the living room and bed rooms is a bit of a mess.

This section of carpet is in the living room under the window. See the bleached out section and then the section across the top that is just an entirely different kind of carpet. I was afraid there was water damage from the window, but she assured me no. Since we replaced the windows and there was not water damage and since that's Baby Girls favorite pee spot, I figure the owners before Linda must have had a dog. When she replaced that section of carpet, they didn't put a pad down so BGs pee soaked through to the concrete. We are having fun with that.

Baby Girl and the cats added the stains to the carpet in the hallway, and check out those wrinkles. We had those in the living room as well. I guess the carpet just wasn't laid very well. And I guess Linda lived with it for 6 years. She spent her money on pretty shutters and chandaliers and lived with the yucky carpet.

We decided to get wood floors. We had a company come out and give us as estimate. They said they could lay real wood floors (that's the subfloor, the wood, the sanding and the finishing) for about $7/square ft. Now I've dreamed of wood floots for a long time and I should have known that price was too good to be true. We sent an installation date of 4/9. Knowing that BG had pee'd in a corner (although at that point I didn't know how bad it was) I 'd left a message and sent an email asking if sealing the concrete was part of the estimate. I didn't hear back. I didn't think much of it and we proceeded on Saturday to pull up the carpet.

Oh it was stinky. That darn BG had made a mess of it.

Within a couple of hours we were to bare concrete in the living room and the hall. This is what the house looks like right now. The boys ran off to go play and I went to Home Depot to check out stain options that would match the tile in the living room. When I got home, CD called. There was a mistake with the estimate. The guy at the supply house had mis-estimated by half. So the cost was going to double. As I was looking across my barren living room, I couldn't say anything. You know how you usually say, "That's OK." I couldn't even begin to form those words on my lips. Because it wasn't OK. She said they'd been looking for something that would work in our budget and she gave me an item number and said it was available at Home Depot.

The more I thought about it the more I realized that this is why she hadn't called me back or answered my emails. She had a problem and wanted to figure out what to do before she called me. But...couldn't she have at least let me know not to pull up the carpet.

Well, I'm not that keen on what she found. So I'm on the hunt for the right wood floor to fit in our budget. Marshall is being good. We've decided not to rush into anything. We want to make sure we both love what we put down. That's good.

In the meantime, we are looking forward to a tad warmer weather. The bare concrete is chilly on the toes. We are looking for a new resource to lay the floor. And we are living in the formal living room with no TV.

Happy Easter

I can't believe how cold it is this Easter morning. Life has been so hectic it never occurred to me to buy an Easter dress, so I will be wearing pants to church this morning as a result of the cold. I guess in this case this works out in my favor.

It's Been a Busy Day

Mostly it was busy because we were ripping up carpet so we can put down wood floors, but that story is for another day.

First, it's the day before Easter and it was snowing this morning in TX. It's kind of hard to tell, but it's there.

Those white streaks are flakes.

Next, I felted the boys clogs (finally because it got cold again and we have exposed concrete in the living room and hall.) I really like how the colors turned out. We were so busy I didn't do a lot of checking and D's (the green pair) for whatever reason felted more than J's. The same yarn, the same size, the same wash cycle. Just different colors.

It wasn't until I pulled them out of the wash that I realized I dropped stitch on the cuff of the blue clogs. So there is an interesting vented design element on the right blue clog. I'm not sure what I will do to fix it or even if I will worry about it.

Here's Baby Girl in the cat's bed. I think they've decided she can have it.

I got a bargin on these beads at a Hancock Fabric store that's going out of business. There are three different selections here. On the left is what I would call silver lined root beer. On the right is a silver lined medium topaz. The middle box is a mix of the root beer, black and light topaz.

I have two tubes of beads that sort of go. Most of them are matte, pearle or iridiscent. I have seven boxes of the boxed beads and only two tubes of the others. But I can always add to the matte collection when Hobby Lobby has a sale. This is all to go on my linen beaded scarf. I'm very excited.

This is Only a Test

Apparently Jan Craig has been knitting golfclub covers since the 60's. And I guess they are still popular with all the major golfers. I decided to give the headcovers a try. The SOWs pointed out that they are basically just socks with no heels. That should be easy enough.

There are several patterns available, but alot of them don't have pictures. So I decided to make a sock without a heel and see what I could come up with on my own. I did this in two evenings. A total of about 4 hours knitting, which I didn't think was too bad. This is not however the full size, this was only a test. The leg of the sock has to be much longer.

This is a prototype. I was testing several different things. First, I tested it "toe up", The goal - to ensure I have enough yarn or even better to make sure I use up all the yarn so I don't end up with stash. Learning - my increases look a little too much like the real toe of a sock. Not exactly the look I'm going for. I need to flatten that out.

I also tested out the size of the stripes and the spacing between the stripes. I like the 3 row stripe. And I like two rows between stripes rather than three. There are three rows between the top and the middle and 2 rows between the middle and the bottom.

I was also playing with options for the ribbing. There's a 2x2 rib. Those never really seem to work for me. They don't pull in like I think they should. I'll probably do what I do on my socks, a 4x2 rib. The other rib was a spiraling 4x2. What's interesting about that is the purls pop out instead of pulling in. I like the pattern, but it doesn't pull in the way I want it to.

A friend of a friend has a Jan Craig cover so the friend is going to bring one so I can see it. I think the genius of her covers is the pom pon. Why grown men want head covers with pom pons in beyond me, but that's what struck the person that brought them up to me. I'm interested to see what weight of yarn she uses. I used worsted weight and as I said it knit up pretty fast. However, most of the patterns I've seen call for sport weight yarn. So I'm curious. I tested worsted weight because I plenty of stash in the weight.

The other interesting thing is the headcovers are wool. Don't they know that (1) you can't machine wash those and (2) when they get wet they smell like wet dog. That's going to make your car smell good when you get caught in a rain shower or in the sprinkler on the golf course. But I would much rather knit in wool than acrylic anyway, so I'm happy.

One Sock, Two Sock, Pink Sock, Blue Sock

I finished another sock, but it's a blue one. The one from Sock Madness - yes, just one. So I have two socks but they don't make a pair. Not even close. The good news is I have two socks finished and with just a little more knitting I can have two pairs of socks.

The fit on this sock is OK. It could be a tad snugger in the foot. I may drop down two more stitches in the next one.

As soon as I finished this sock last night I picked up sock #2 of the pink pair. Just a few more rows of the gusset decrease and then it's a race to the finish on the foot. I made good progress and hope to be done at the end of the week.

If the second sock for Sock Madness works with my stash, then I may start one of those. If it's the sport weight pair, I'll work on sock #2 of the blue pair and wait for sock madness pattern #3. I don't really have second sock syndrome. In fact, the more sock #1s I have, the more likely I am to do a sock #2.

Something I did notice. When I picked up the Koigu sock after working with the blue sock (Regia, I'm pretty sure) the Koigu was like knitting with butter. It was so soft compared to the Regia. I hadn't given it much thought before, but it was very noticeable last night.

The Bead Market

I do not need another hobby, but if I did, beading would be on the list. I went to the Bead Market today looking for rocaille beads for my linen scarf. There wasn't a huge selection of rocailles, but I found these and they are perfect.

On the other hand, there were tons of other awesome beads. It was a bit overwhelming, but I had a good time.

The linen scarf is on hold at least until I get my two pairs of in progress socks done. Then I may start it or I may go on with my Cherry Tree Hill socks and then start on the lace projects in my stash.

New Clothes

Will you just look at how well two of the shirts my Mom bought me for my birthday match my one finished KPPPM sock. Now if I can just get the other one finished, I can actually wear the socks with the shirts. I'm on the heel gusset of the second sock, but Sock Madness has gotten in the way.

I met for 5 hours yesterday with three other sisters in the wool (and 2 in spirit) and we knitted away on our Mad Cow socks. Don't ask, we didn't name it, but I like the pattern.

My yarn selection is working out OK, but it might have been better with a little more contrast between the two. I will consider doing the pattern again if the fit comes out OK. If not, I may adapt it and do a rib. I've finished another repeat since this picture. That's another 10 rows. I really need to start thinking about the heel. I did venture out this round and decided to do the sock toe up (as you can see) I've never done that before, but Susan showed me how. And no matterh which direction you went, toe up or top down, you have to do a short row heel and I've never done that before. They say it's challenging. Great.

Now as for finishing in the first 16 in my group. I'm not sure I even want to. My fingers hurt now from all the knitting. They aren't so much muscle sore, but sore from pushing the sharp needles around. I have set my mind to finishing these two socks as quickly as I can, but if I don't move to the next round, I don't think I'll cry. In 5 hours yesterday I barely got past the first repeat after the toe. There are people that have finished two socks already and I'm not even to the heel. But that's OK. It has been fun. And it ain't over til it's over.

One KPPPM Sock Done

That's double good news. I have one and a half socks done and a pair of needles freed up for Sock Madness. Now, if I can just find the yarn for Sock Madness, I'll be in good shape for Saturday.

Here's a lovely shot of the toe. This is a Jeri toe. I can do it, but can't explain it as well as Jeri can I'm sure. It involved finding the spot where I wanted the decrease and one round SSKand then the next round K2T. The next round you SSK using the K2T stitch as the K in the SSK. And the next round incorporating the SSK into the K2T. Not difficult at all and I forgot my stitch markers and survived just fine without them all the while on a plane. It makes a nice snug toe.

This shot shows the colorway a little better and it's just funny because of Baby Girl. She got curious about the beeping camera and jumped down to take a look. She is so crazy.

My plan for tomorrow is to track down my yarn for Sock Madness and, if time allows, pick up the gusset stitches on KPPPM sock #2. I really don't want it to get left behind. Knowing I'm not that fast a knitter, I know I won't finish before Sock Madness kicks in, but I want to keep moving and it is good to stay in the sock mood.

And oh yeah, this is stash busted.

It's Madness - Sock Madness

The emails are flying amongst the SOWs (we're international now with Jo in Ireland). There is much discussion about how to post to flickr. I figure, if I get that far, it will be a miracle.

Here's what the SockMadness website had to say about the yarn needs for the first pair of socks.

"As promised, here is a little advance info on the materials required for the first pattern. It requires one skein of variegated yarn and one skein of solid and US #1 needles. The weight is fingering and Felicia did the test knit with Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock (of course)."

I have a goal of destashing, so I wanted to find something within my stash that would work. Luckily I have a photo record of my stash right here on my blog. So I searched my photo album and found this. That's an almost solid blue and a varigated brown and blue that I actually bought to go together. I was going to do some mixing of my own at one point, but this is perfect for this first pair of socks for Sock Madness. I'm starting to feeling lucky.

In other news, I'm about to wrap up one of my KPPPM socks to free up the needles. I'm traveling tomorrow and really hoping I can get finished no later than Friday. If I would just sit and knit for an hour or two it could be done. Except maybe for the kitchner and I'm not above making that wait. Pictures to follow.

Overdue Update

Has it been almost a month since I updated my blog? I can't believe it. I have been traveling a lot. And getting some knitting done too.

First, Josh and Daniel's clogs are done except for the felting. I don't want to felt if they aren't here to try them on. So we'll do that the next time they are here. Now DH is hinting he might like a pair. Tough luck hon, I'm out of the clog business for a while.

We finally had Christmas with my family in OK. My sister loved her crazy clogs.

They were huge when she got them. I think she might have been worried. And, although I didn't notice it before, I can see in the picture, that the one on left is bigger then the one on the right. Fortunately, when she re-felted them, they fit fine and were the same size. She loves them.

I'm cruising right along on my Koigu socks. After some discussion with the SOWs, I decided to just do a 4 x 2 rib with this yarn. Others had attempted a pattern of some sort and it only got lost in all the varigation.

I'm not a huge fan of striping yarn and you can kind of see it in this picture, but this yarn is spiraling. It alternates between the pink and the blue. Which to me is striping. Love the yarn, love the colors, am living with the striping.

I've turned the heels and with Susan's help picked up the gusset on one of the socks. Now I need to get these finished because I need the needles for Sock Madness http://sockmadness.wordpress.com/. I join my SOWs in asking, "What did I get myself into?" This is a speed knitting contest. One need only look back to my last entry to see that I've been working on these socks for - oh - about a month.

I'm in Wendy's toe up division, which means, right off the bat I'm learning something new. I've never done toe up socks before. But I guess that's what it's all about. Stretching ourselves to try new things. I did make the switch from double points to magic loop. That was a great trade too. No more stitches falling off the needles while they are in the bag. Magic loop makes a much better traveling sock project.

I have several skeins of sock yarn so I hope the first pattern is compatible with one of them. I figure it won't be a 4 x 2 rib. Most the of the yarn I have left in stash is not overly varigated so a pattern should work fine.

Finally, while I was in MN, I went to Needlework Unlimited and rolled around in their yarn. So many choices, so little space in my bag. I fell in love with one of their finished objects and knew I had to do it. It was a lace wrap made with linen yarn and 10,500 beads. Again, I'm having one of those "What the heck was I thinking" moments, but this wrap is fantastic. http://iwpshopinfo.interweave.com/Knits/2002%20newsletters/SummerKnits2002.htm Here's a picture of the finished object, but the picture in no way does it justice. That pattern was in the Summer 2002 Interweave Knits magazine.

I know I won't actually wear a shawl, so I'm making it scarf size which means I need half the number of beads. Oh good - only 5,250 beads to string on the yarn. Now that's mindless work.

I am on a yarn diet, so this linen is a bit of a cheat, but I did finish two projects and the socks are coming along, so I decided it was OK. Plus, I don't know when I will get back to Minneapolis and the pattern was free with purchase of yarn