10 Things You Never Knew About Oliver

1. He was born in Missouri.
2. He loves lettuce.
3. He hates getting his nails clipped.
4. He once ate a strip of staples.
5. He once ate the top half of a Wrigley's Plen-T-Pack, including the foil wrappers.
6. He's afraid of exercise balls.
7. He snores. When he's awake.
8. His eyeballs are like magnets for lint, fuzz, and his own fur, but that's ok because...
9. His tongue is so long that he can lick his own eyeballs with it.
10. He has an extra nipple.

Introducing the Friday Knitting Group

The idea for an office knitting group came about when my co-worker Jenny happened upon me happily knitting in the company lunchroom. She took one look at my size 5 circulars and the bunny rabbit hat emerging from them, and she freaked out. "I KNIT, TOO!! WE SHOULD GET TOGETHER AND KNIT!" The Friday Knitting Group got together for the first time that week. On Friday.

We had a rather paltry turnout at last week's get-together, but I managed to capture a couple of exciting moments nonetheless. Here we have Pauline and Jocelyn working on their projects.



Below we have a shot of Jenny and I proudly displaying our yarn stash. Let me tell you something about Jenny... she is the Grandmaster Flash of knitting. She's one of those knitters to whom you can bring your fingering weight scarf on size 00 needles with dropped stitches running down ten rows (ten PATTERN rows) for first aid, because in mere moments, Jenny will have returned the item to its proper state. Anyway, as you can tell from the picture, Jenny is a little shy. And so am I.

Hopefully, I'll be able to introduce even more of the Friday Knitting Group next week, so stay tuned!

In other news, I've made an eensy, weensy bit of progress on the Lady Eleanor Entrelac Stole. Here it is after about an hour of work (note the nosy Pug lurking the background):

Here's a close-up of the piece. Are the little squares great or what? I love this Noro Silk Garden colorway (#47). It keeps me (of the short attention span) riveted as I furiously knit and knit just to see what the next row will look like. Oooo, it's black! No, wait - now it's brown! Pure knitting joy!

Welcome To My World...

I was racking my brains trying to come up with all sorts of creative and clever ways to describe who I am, and then I realized that this picture just about sums me up: my world-weary pug in one of my many, many (MUCH too many) knitted projects. The rest are just boring details, but here they are in brief:

AGE: 31
HOMETOWN: Iowa, Georgia, & Singapore
CURRENT LOCATION: Los Angeles
MARITAL STATUS: Two months till the Big Day
Children: None
PUGS: One
Visits to the Container Store and/or Borders in the past week: Five

Just to be completely up front with you, this blog will include none of the following things commonly found in blogs: juicy gossip about co-workers and friends; personal grievances (unless they're with Oliver or knitting); axes to grind (again, unless they're with the pug or knitting); bones to pick (ditto); and deep thoughts on life, love, sex, and politics. What you can expect to find in this blog are the following: progress reports on my knitting projects; updates on the goings-on within my office knitting group, lighthearted (and possibly boring) commentary on knitting and pugs; and occasional snippets of my pre-wedding madness. Oh, and lots and lots and LOTS of pictures of Oliver.

So let's go ahead and launch right into the lighthearted commentary on knitting.

Like many knitters, I have a tendency to begin several (dozen) projects before I've completed previous ones. I think I actually may be worse than most. Yes, I could quite possibly be the Imelda Marcos of knitting. No, no, no - I don't mean that I have diamond-studded yarn hanging around my house. I mean that my life overfloweth with knitting projects in various stages of completion. Here's a sampling of what's currently in the works...

Here's a gold shrug (Knit with Patons? Cascade? I forget). Start date: Late November, '06

Bunny baby hat (Rowan Wool Cotton). Start date: Late December, '06

Lady Eleanor Entrelac Stole (Noro Silk Garden). Start date: Tonight? Tomorrow night? Next year?

That's right, Pug: BOW TO THE YARN!

And to prove that I am capable of seeing a project from start to finish, witness...

...the devil baby hat...





... the cashmere kimono that turned out to be big enough only for an embryo...





...and the Pug in all his basket weave glory.