Grinding on.
Well, I have at last learned how to tell the dark green leaf yarn from the slightly lighter background yarn on the Olympic project (can you? honestly, can you?) (well, this isn't a fair comparison, it's a picture taken in daylight) (and oh, crap, those stitches are coming off! damn!) but haven't gotten much done on it. I like how the wrong side of the knitting shows the leaf in reverse - unexpected, and way fun. Thanks, Theresa and abs; I love how it looks, too. This is possibly why I have not set fire to it. Yet. (The yarn came in a kit from Sommerfuglen.) (they were great) (NAYY)

I have, however, made a huge amount of progress on the stripey commission that's due Friday. And slacked off pretty much everything else, and been sort of (ok, a lot) crabby to everybody. Sorry, everybody. And thanks, Brooklyn Tweed (and Kathleen), but I still think the hat looks spectacularly bad on me. It is also much larger than it looks. Ah, well. The middle child, though, she thinks this gigunda hat is COOL. So it's now hers.

Knitting in Public at Borders was fun! Come on by week after next, people! Next week, the people of knitting, they gather at the Panera in North Nashua, the one which is too frigging far for me to quite make it to. But go, go knit, you knitters, you. Actually almost all my progress on the leaf cardigan was at knitting Sunday. Yesterday, I sat and grumped. Mostly about the lack of MEN'S figure skating on NBC. Middle child: "do they have men's figure skating, mom?" Me: "@)#*($#$*#(* ROAR @(#*$(#*$ROAR"

Well, that was what I was thinking. What I said was, "Yes, and the men are incredible skaters. But we don't get to see them." Insert rant of choice: topics available include stupid NBC, American media generally, American blindness to non-American achievement, or the Bush administration. Because you can always rant about the Bush administration.

For those wondering, Ruth had issues with her Olympic knitting. I merely pointed out another small, fixable mistake in a section of knitting that she was already going to be fixing. I swear. She isn't really going to kill me.

I've been working on The Artist's Way, by Julie Cameron, and the one and so far only exercise I've managed to do is these 3 longhand daily morning pages of brain dump. And dagnabbit, it's doing something. It is utterly freaky. I looked through the chapter for the fourth week, and she writes, have you noticed the thing that happens when you get to 1 1/2 pages yet? And I have! How weird! She also writes, you may start remembering a lot more vivid dreams. And I had been, and still am. This is preparation for going on a weekend workshop that Donna pushed me to sign up for, and I'm so grateful that she did.

Other total non-sequiturs: the wallpaper saga continues. I don't want to talk about it. But I'm now in my 8th week of workmen in my house, and it is getting old.