Kitchener queen

I bought a crappy car. It's a 1993 Honda Civic del sol with a lot of rust (I'm showing you her good side) and a LOT of miles. But the engine seems solid, and it's awfully fun to drive--reminds me of my Porsche. I hope it makes it to the summer months when I can actually see how it handles!

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I also finally finished up the baby gifts for one friend, only a couple weeks after the birth! I'm happy to report that a miracle did occur during blocking and I love how the blanket turned out!!



And a closeup of the lace pattern (not the true color):



And the bonnet and sweater pair:

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I also finally dug my bog jacket back out. I've been really stalled out on this--first I spun my wheels for a couple of months trying to figure out how to make the front upper chest parts match, and in the end I couldn't figure it out. So, they'll have different color stripes.



Then, I came to the point where I had to Kitchener stitch together the underside of the arm and where the single piece that came up over the back/shoulder/down the chest meets up with the flap that was liberated from the front. I'm aware that this makes no sense without having knit the pattern. Suffice to say, I had to graft 181 stitches!!! It's a good thing I like doing Kitchener! But I had stalled out here as well because I'd never grafted garter stitch and didn't know how they needed to be arranged and whenever I was ready to knit I was always to tired to puzzle it out. Yesterday TNT had a "marathon" of the show Bones, so I got out my books and my sweater and I went at it. Took me 5 hours, but it's done--it's the bottom red stripe in this picture:

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And it turns out my cat turned into a nip-head while I was gone. She just loves rolling around on this cardboard scratcher when I put some catnip on it. She rolls so hard she tips it over, then looks around with that "whaaaaa?" look, then turns around to check out the other side of the cardboard. It's good to have her back!!

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All in all, life is good.