So much better

Today has been as much better on the technology front as could possibly be wished. I fixed my laptop keyboard; its screen's backlight decided to work again (it had been on the fritz); and best of all, I got a wireless card and very nice new speakers for my desktop. In the computer realm, I am totally in business. I even got some knitting done (in class, but none of the teachers seem to mind). In fact, I'm making good progress on the second sleeve. I think I might even get it done this week, and that's without doing any knitting outside of class.

(The sleeve is basking in the sound of my new speakers.)

I know I've been promising the pattern for the Cable Mittenettes, but that's going to have to wait another post. I have a bit of homework to do tonight, so I need to keep this relatively short, and writing out pattern instructions in a nice, usable form is going to take more time than I have to spend tonight. So instead, I'll answer a few questions:

DPNs or two circulars for sleeves? I've never knit a sleeve on DPNs. In fact, this is only the second sleeve I've ever knit. I'm using two circulars because that's what I had handy when I started. I generally like DPNs, but I find that the large-ish metal ones are too heavy to handle easily, and I didn't have any wood ones around when I needed them. The other thing is that I like short-ish DPNs, and the sleeve gets to a circumference that wouldn't work on a four-needle set, although it might be ok on a five-needle set. On the other hand, I'm not entirely enamored of the two circular method, either. I really think I need to knit more sleeves before I can offer anything resembling an informed opinion on the matter.

So, you just moved. Have you found the LYS yet? Well, sort of. Google told me where it is (the nearest is pretty close to where I live), but I haven't been there yet. I'm sort of wondering why I need to check out the LYS during Lent when I gave up buying yarn... Of course, I do need needle for some of the lace knitting I have planned.

That Ostrich thing in some of your pictures - what is it? I'd like to tell you it's a disk filled with good knitting karma, or something to that effect, but that would be wholly untrue, although possibly more interesting than what it really is. The Ostrich was the airplane that was my senior design project. The team I was on had a deep appreciation for irony (our second choice for a name was Icarus). The Ostrich could fly 10L of water, and was the only plane in the competition (scroll down for 2005-06) to be able to fly so much. The Ostrich fuselage was rack for soda bottles, and the disk is a water-jet cutout from one of the openings. Several of us kept one as a souvenir, and I use mine as a coaster.

What do you do with those washcloths that you knit, anyway? I give them away. A few have been gifts for family, but the bulk of them I've given to the Missionaries of Charity in Washington D.C., who run a shelter for single mothers and mothers-to-be.