Best Quote I Heard All Day
My therapist told me the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what I start. So far today, I have finished 2 bags of M&M's and a chocolate cake. I feel better already.--Dave Barry

M&Ms and Diet Coke. My favorite snack.

Estonian Est Donian
I stayed up until midnight to finish this sucker. It's nice but I do wish it were longer and I knew from the get-go I would feel that way. Trying it on in front of the bathroom mirror and adjusting it so that it looked jaunty as opposed to jaundiced took a bit of doing but it will look fine with a black shirt and black pants.

This is unblocked and the ends are not yet darned in but that was too much to do at midnight.

So some thoughts on the Estonian Scarf project, after all is said and done.

• Very good for beginners and people like me who need mindless projects when they're too stressed to do otherwise
• Handpainted yarn looks best in a geometric lace pattern and looks like crap in overblown lace patterns. The simpler the geometric pattern, probably the better.
• Brightly or lighter colored handpainted yarn is better to use in a lace pattern than a darker handpainted
• I will definitely experiment with selvedges on my next triangular shawl. I did not like the left-hand selvedge much. There's a good selvedge on the FPS that I would use in place of Nancy Bush's.
• I used my regular bind-off as opposed to the one in the directions. Doesn't make a difference, as far as I could see.

Now What?
I hate that sense of loss when I've finished something I've enjoyed knitting. So I went rummaging around at 7 a.m. this morning looking for some #1s to start some socks. And stumbled upon this lovely:

I figured out that it had been about a year and a half since I've worked on the Queen Anne's Lace. It's about time I finished it and the Forest Path Stole before I start something else, socks excluded since they don't count as projects.

Surprisingly, it only took me a couple of minutes to get back into the pattern.

QAL is actually one of the few, if not the only, Alice Starmore designs that uses only one color throughout for the contrast color. So it is relatively easy to follow the pattern. Of course, none of her designs are what I'd call "easy." But it's a nice sweater.

Color Cueless in The Knitting Universe
Puppy-shit brown. Now there's a color I find despicable, even when it's mixed with other colors. And boy oh boy did Knitter's go to town with this color in the latest issue. At least, it seems as if half of the sweaters feature this color in one way or another. And why another Hudson Bay jacket? Don't I remember a similar design from back when? It's probably the most decent item in the magazine.

What the fuck goes on in Mondragon's head? Editors generally dictate the fashion scheme, so you have to lay the blame on this exceptionally disastrous issue squarely at his feet. I can't believe that designers would actually want to use these colors. And the issue's theme is "Cool Cues"? Or "Color Cues"? Who would know, since the issue is called both in two different places on that muddled web site of theirs. It's apparently "Cool Cues" on the cover but I guess nobody copy-edits the web site. They certainly don't copy-edit the magazine.

If you want to preview the issue, do it prior to a meal so that the contents of your stomach are minimal.

Of course, I haven't seen any of the articles. But based on past experience, I can wait. Forever.

And while I'm at it, what possessed The Knitting Universe to put up those ghastly videos on knitting techniques? "Retro Knit School" indeed. Some visually challenged genius decided to shoot them in black-and-white using a dark background and dark yarn. Brilliant. Check them out for yourselves. If you can get them to load after fiddling around with the screen graphic. Hint: click on the "start" symbol.

Moving Out, Moving On
This is a relatively short entry today because Corinne and Mike are moving in today and tomorrow, and I need to get out of the house and out of their way. Chaos will reign.

Liz finishes her cruise tomorrow and docks in NYC sometime in the morning. We've missed her. Guess I'd better find those #1s and get cracking on a pair of socks for her so she doesn't think I've been dawdling. Gotta do socks always. You can't have too many of them. They're rare, handy and the cold weather will be here before you know it.

I'm thinking the French Riviera for the winter. Now that's rare and handy.