Well, whaddya know?

Back again, and so soon! Well, I just popped into the coffee shop today to check my email and found I had a little time to blog.

Here's my next sock, which is going really quickly. I'm calling it California Dreaming because the juxtaposition of the orange and turquoise with the yellow and avocado make me think of California.

This is a ball of that Kaffe Fassett design sock yarn, which I'm making up into socks for the Emperor for Christmas. You'd think that the colors were kind of feminine, but the gold and the blues really macho it up. However, the Emperor doesn't assign gender to colors like some; he loves wild striping and if I made him some pink and purple socks, he'd wear them. As a matter of fact, I made some for him for Christmas last year. Like the California socks, this one is going really quickly, too. If I finish it soon enough, I just might make a second pair for him.

And, I'm still plugging away at the Pasticcio Circular Vest. The stitch pattern is really open, so it's going really quickly. I'm already past the armholes, and am something like one-third finished with the project. The Cascade Sierra yarn is perfect for this. It's something like 60/40 cotton and wool, and it has a nice drape while it's easy to work with.

And finally, I'm about halfway finished with stringing up the beads for the Prairie Rose necklace. It's going to be fun to wear, and I have a whole bunch of things to wear it with.

The barista here has put the radio on NPR, and they're playing the BBC World Service news. When I hear the BBC, I can pretend for just a minute that I'm in England. For the past few weeks, I've been posessed by a wanderlust that's pulling me toward England, but there's nothing I can do about it until I find a job and work at it long enough to make it possible for us to go. For now, though, I listen to the BBC in the afternoons and enjoy British programming with the Emperor in the evenings. All I need now is a whiff of that peculiar smell that you can only get in that country -- I think it's mold, because everything is so damp and green and old there. Here in the West, the air is relentlessly fresh and moving, which I love -- but I also love the close dampness of English air.

Well, that's enough for now. Catch you next time I have a little bit of time.