Frogged and A Hot Fairy Tale

I do feel like such a slacker for not having written any of AHDB recently, but the stress of normal life, was making me unable to write as my cathartic release.
I've been knitting instead.

I started to teach myself how to do Cables, so that I could get a leg up on the Alexandra coat that I've been talking about for months.

I'm very, very glad that I decided to give it a go with normal yarn as opposed to my Lucien. (Which, I know has been dyed, but I have not received due to the "club" nature of it. I'll get my first two skeins of it in the next few weeks)

I was banging my head against the wall trying to do the cable chart, and then I finally said screw it, and cast on the entire project, as if I'm doing it entirely.

Well, I discovered my first problem. I was counting the chart as 26 stitches, instead of the 25 it actually was. That was just my mind merging a symbol that looked like another symbol, hence getting 26 instead of 25.

But, once I got past that, I discovered other problems. I didn't get 7 rows before I ran into this problem.
After frogging and putting it back on at least half a dozen times, I gave up and started poking about online.

Thats when I made a significant discovery. Everyone (minus one person) has had extreme problems with the pattern. There are many bugs in it, and entire parts missing from the instructions.

Woohoo. This means it's not me messing it up! It means that it's just a bad pattern.

Well, one of the girls I was chatting with, talked about picking up the project again and completely rewriting the pattern, but she hadn't thought about that in forever (really not since she had put down the pattern in the first place)

But, me chatting with her reminded her how much she loved the sweater and how it looks, and thus is inspired to possibly pick it up again. If she does, she'll send me the pattern. Which at this point, I'd trust her pattern over the original author any day. (The author put errata up on the pattern site, only after the girl I was chatting with pointed out the mistakes, and it doesn't count all the mistakes)

I'm about to start Marissa's project, as I picked up the last skein of yarn I needed today.

This, most definitely might count as the "neat thing" & holiday gift, as it is quite a well.. it's a good project. I hope she'll like it.

Everyone else is just getting a little small item.

I am also, starting a "Princess Bride Read-Knit-Along"
I've never read the Princess Bride.. I remember starting it in the 5th grade, but that was the day before school was ending, and I couldn't borrow the book from my friend. So I read a total of 1 page before I had to give it back, and somehow it has managed to not make it in my reading pile all these years. So I have till June 21st to finish reading the book and knit something related to The Princess Bride.

I now have a copy of the book, as I finally checked out "Hooked on Books" which is not far from my house. I like it much more than The Book Rack. But still not as impressed. I guess I'm just spoiled thanks to The Bookworm (Boulder).

The version I have is amusing. I think it was a cover that was directed towards the adults rather than kids. It's got artwork from like the 80's. But the back... the back is amusing..

“What Happens-
When the most beautiful girl in the world marries the handsomest prince in the world and he turns out to be a son of a bitch?”






I also picked up:
Death Du Jour by Kathy Reitchs, it's the next in the Bones books.
Shakespeare's Landlord by Charlaine Harris, first in the Shakespeare series
Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris, 4th book in the Sookie Stackhouse series - mmm Eric. love him.
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, woohoo.. finally gonna get to read it.

I was able to justify buying the books, because I only spend 23$ for all the books, and they are all books I plan on sending to Guy to read during the summer break and books to get him through exam times etc.

We ended up going to the bead store, and I'm honestly surprised how much I got for as little as I spent. Mother of Mine had a 5$ gift certificate, so with buying a bead for her, I only ended up spending 3$ (and 1.60$ of that was the bead for her)

Oh, random knitting note (sorry, typing past my bed time.. what do you expect?)

Having figured out how to DO cables, I have now accomplished one of my two main goals for the year. The next is to tackle simple socks. Woohoo.

Mother of Mine and I hunted slightly for Easter dinner. Which I can't recall if I've spoken of or not.

Now as you all know, I do not celebrate the christian holidays as I am not christian. But as Mother of Mine is connecting with her church and stuff like that, I am supportive of her. So I was sitting there thinking what we might want for Easter dinner, because she'll want to have something nice.
And really, the only thing that came to my mind was "Hmmm.. Rabbit would be nice."

Yes, I am that twisted.

Rabbit on Easter. bwhahahahaha

Unfortunately, the rabbit is not meant to be (this year). We left of inquiring about it till today, and the only kind we would be able to get would be whole (ugh) and frozen.

Nope, won't work for this year.

Oh, random jump.. sorry again..
I finally found the damn buttons. Remember the quest for the buttons? I hadn't gone to JoAnn's. Honesty I just should have looked there first. Perfect purple buttons, and I'm slick enough that they are the perfect size. Again, they were 50% off. SWEEET.
They are even stitched on to the leg warmers. So, as soon as Mother of Mine finishes weaving in the ends (i did the buttons, but it was her knitting project) i'll get to wear them, and will also post photos.
The purple was a grand choice and goes well with the blue. Woohoo!

Random: watching Alias season two.. and it is just always weird to see a Russian Cowboy bar and Russian cowboy songs it is not new, but it still amuses me (First time I ever saw it was of course James Bond, Goldeneye. But that was still in english)

Work: It was a rough beginning of the week just because things were changed and other things were in the spotlight. Nothing was my fault as I wasn't there. But it was blown out of proportion due to it being something that really NEVER happens. It just happened to happen and it bit us. (Mostly, the only reason it happened at all, is because one of our agents screwed up in the first place. Then things just slipped)
So that lead to meetings, and more meetings, and more meetings. Which just made it an unbelievably tiresome and hectic week, and made me freak out about my job. I really do just need to remember to take a deep breath and remember that I am a good worker, and I do my job, and that I'm not one of the people they want to let go.
It didn't help my mindset either to find out that another one of my Ravelry buddies ended up being let go this week as well. It was completely out of the blue, which is another reason everything that happened made me so freaked.

I should stop rambling about it. As I am rambling as I am quite tired.

Later peoples...

Oh, one last note:
Doctor Who season 4... FREAKING AWESOME!
We just finished watching it. And OH MY GODS.

I still don't like Catherine Tate, but I do like Donna a bit more.

And everything else... just... wow.. wow wow wow wow.

Another random note:
I have an entire rant to post soon, but I'm too tired to try to rant about it now, and when I first went to rant about it, Blogger didn't want to work on my work computer. So, I've got it sitting waiting for ranting.