That was definitely close. I finished the Clapotis for my mother-in-law last Friday with 2.5 yards left to spare. It felt like a race to the finish… thankfully, I won. It would have been a royal pain in the ass to have to rip back to reclaim yarn in order to finish. I spent a good deal of time during the decrease section glaring at the Clapotis then trying to gauge how much yarn I had left. There were even a few times when I tried to weight the increase section from the beginning against what was left of my yarn ball… one in each hand… doing that balancing scale hand action… geez, I must have looked like a freak.

This shot is just to show you the colors. The yarn was Laurel from Schaefer Yarns in their Empress Wu Zhao colorway. I still need to soak it and lay it out to get rid of the curling and to straighten out the dropped stitches a little. The advice I got at my LYS was to just add a glug of vinegar along with the wool wash stuff. (Rebecca, I have no idea if lemon juice would work… definitely acidic… something to look into.) I’m probably going to go with the vinegar since that’s what I have on hand at the moment. No way am I going out for a lemon tonight… it’s dark, wet, the day before a holiday in the San Francisco Bay Area, which means that people are wandering around in moronic hazes in their large SUVs. Nope, not going out tonight.

The Husband is beginning to set the table for dinner… he’s made crab and corn bisque… mmmm… crab. I helped pick the meat out of the two crabs we picked up earlier today. I love Dungeness crab season. Yum!

Public Service Announcement
I’m going to be switching the name I use to comment on other people’s blogs because there are a few other Lizs… Lizes… (what the hell is the plural of Liz?) out there in knitting blog land. So, if you see a Zardra posting comments there’s no need to wonder who the hell that is, for it is I! (Do you think that last bit needs a sword for added florish?) Um… yeah….

In other news
My grandfather died on Saturday. My dad is heading down to Arizona next week to help my uncle down there get things straightened out and generally get in the way (his words not mine). The funeral probably won’t be until after the new year because my grandmother is buried in South Dakota, so they need to arrange for transport as well as burial. So, I’m waiting to find out if I will be expected to go to South Dakota in a couple weeks.

Meanwhile, I am worried about a violin. My dad’s side of the family has a Stradivarius that came to America with my great-great-(great?)-grandfather in 1850-something. The last time I saw it, my grandparents had it in a display case on the wall… across from a window. *shudder* All I can think of is it really needs to be taken out of that stupid case and put in a proper violin case away from the sunlight and humidity that display case has/will expose it to. Even better… it needs to be played. I’d even almost be willing to try my hand at playing violin again so that it could be taken care of properly. Of course, I don’t know if it’s even in playable condition or even how it is secured in the case (I can only pray that it was at least put in the case without harming the violin). *sigh*

Boy, are my priorities screwed up or what?

Oh yeah… knitting
Clapotis was finished on Friday night. I’m slogging my way through the afghan for my mom.

The Clapotis decreases were begun yesterday and are progressing. Of course, now I find myself in a race against the yarn for the finish. I either will run just short or will have exactly enough. Part of me is already anticipating having to rip back the decreases as well as at least one straight row repeat. This makes me shudder to think about it… I’m not really on too much of a deadline on this, but it is taking time away from the afghan. I had just decided to try to finish the Clapotis first since it was closer to completion.

Finishing the Clapotis will also present a new dilemma — how to wash it. I’m making it out of Schaefer Yarn‘s Laurel, which is their hand-dyed 100% mercerized pima cotton. I know I need to do at least one rinse with vinegar added for color-fastness. I’m just not sure what order to do everything in. Wash, then vinegar rinse? Vinegar rinse, then wash? Vinegar in both wash and rinse? I don’t want to send it off reeking of vinegar.

I recovered from my trip over the end of the semester rather ungracefully because I feel like I have promptly fallen into the deep hole that is December and all that it brings.

My last paper was turned in at 4 pm on Sunday. I found out that I got a B in my XML class… could have gotten an A- but I made a stupid mistake. I think I have received an A in my collection development plan… but I won’t know for sure till I hear from the prof, which should be in the next week or so.

Now that we are entering the second half of the month, it feels as if the insanity is building. But when I look at my schedule it seems relatively empty (which is a good thing as I do have Christmas knitting to finish).

Saturday is The Husband’s company’s Christmas party. We will be meeting up for dinner in the city at Firenze by Night. After dinner, we will adjourn to Beach Blanket Babylon.

Sunday, we go back up to the city to have dinner with The Husband’s brother and his wife before they get in their car and move back to Toronto.

Next Friday, begins vacation. My work is giving us Friday and Monday off for Christmas as well as the 2nd. So, I decided to just take the four days inbetween off and catch my breath away from both work and school. The Husband is also taking this time off, and we have reservations for a couple nights in Mendocino. Mmmmm… nothing quite like the cold, foggy coastline of NorCal to relax me.

As for Christmas knitting, I may be doing alright, but I’m not going to make that claim. I just have the decrease section of my mother-in-law’s Clapotis to do, then it will get mailed off to Canada and hopefully make it through customs without too much trouble. My mother’s afghan is another story as I haven’t been working on it. I’d guesstimate that I have about a quarter of it done. I’m trying desperately trying to avoid the vision of being up late on the 24th wishing it done.

I think that might have been thunder I just heard. Winter has certainly decided to make an entrance — it rained Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday was all grey and blowy, and today is even greyer, windier, and cold. Quite a change from the warm, blowy weather we had right before Thanksgiving. In about a week we’ve gone from Red Flag warnings (for fire conditions) to winter. Sadly, it seems that even with rain last Friday and the beginning of this week people are having a hard time adjusting to driving in the water falling from the sky.

Yup, that was lightening I just saw… cool.

I don’t want to be at work. I want to be cuddled up in warm blankets, drinking hot chocolate or tea in front of a fireplace reading or knitting. Not going to happen since I have to be here for another 4 hours. Don’t have a fireplace anyways.

My friend emailed me some pictures of her daughter wearing the stuff I knit for her. Too cute. 🙂 Unfortunately, it looks like I got it to her just in time. How fast do babies grow? I hope she’ll be able to wear it more than once. Maybe I’ll have to come up with something a little more permanent. Maybe a stuffed animal of some sort.

The “Registration Saga of 2005” entered its third act for me several days ago when it was announced that the professor whose cataloging class I had registered for was no longer going to be teaching that class. The email then cryptically said that they were trying to keep it an online only class. This sucks because I signed up for this particular section for the professor and for it only being online. Now it looks like they may have gotten a new professor, but no word on the status of the location of the class.