freakin’ friday

fridays are rough for us.
work-related communication usually takes on a frenetic keening quality just after lunch, which crescendoes into a volcanic spewing and spitting of distress while everyone at the office scrambles to get things done before the weekend.
it’s hard to feel like i get any of my own work done on friday—there are necessary interruptions, and people who need to talk, you know, because they are stressed or because there is a crisis. and then there is a meeting or two in which a few people decide that many tedious parts of our work will change globally—across all six volumes of the project we are involved in right now. oy!
around 5pm, everyone else’s “done” work starts coming to us. it often feels like a landslide.
what can i say? yay.
i feel like a wrung-out dishrag.

unfortunately, i do not get to drop stuff off with others and leave til monday. i work on the weekend because i am “offsite” and because i have monday “off”—i teach all day monday at the LYS. i don’t mind so much though; it’s always quiet on my weekend work days, and i get tons accomplished. it’s refreshing and satisfying. i don’t have to be at my desk at any certain time—i can stop at 5 pm instead of 6 if i want. i can cook, and leave things simmering while i work. it’s rather nice.

i’m lucky to have a job with flexibility; the flip side of that is a little chaos at times. it has to balance out somewhere. (this is me, giving myself a pep talk)

by this hour, i am SO craving the comforts of wool. let’s see what we can do about that.

first off, we LOVE the new socks. math whiz socks rock. i’m having trouble getting the color to represent well in pictures, but not worried enough about it to deny you a peek

just look at all those sexy right-triangles (who says creative types can’t be good at math). and, i like the way the yarn is working up. because well, i am by no stretch of the imagination a Dyer. i am totally not disciplined for that at this time, nor do i have an area to set up and control the process properly. i get a lot of blotchy yarn when i dye, and this skein was no exception. but it is working up very nicely and, (knock wood) there is so far no evidence of pooling. so i’m pretty chuffed about that part.

these are my late-night comfort project right now. i am budgeting my time of working on them, because if i didn’t i would abandon all else. but i’m being good—i only work on them for about an hour, just before bed. the rest of the time i am finishing up mitts and the smokin’ sox.

which are looking might-ay, might-ay good too

go on—give ’em a squeeze. i know you want to . . .
seriously though, i am trucking along on this second one. i dunno what i was whining about. this one is not going too slowly, the way i’d imagined it would. ask debbie—i was whining about sock two of this pair. as in i don’ WAnna make another one . . .

of course, socks just fall off the needles when i actually WORK on them. and it turns out, it’s just the perception i have in the middle of sock one, that there is still a whole lotta sock knittin’ still to go. sock two always goes so much faster for me.

my name is anne, and i have FIRST SOCK syndrome.

i’ve been keeping up the spinning too—it’s a natural. i dug into that red fiber the other night and spun up a whole bobbin and a half of thin singles for sock yarn (for the non-spinners, that’s a lot if you spin fine, like for sox or lace . . .).

i had entertained the idea of making some lace-y weight yarn with it, because the color is so stunning. i did some sampling

but i wasn’t exactly in the mood, even though this fiber does make a delicious fine yarn. it’s very soft and lustrous, and doesn’t want to be too cushy—it has potential for a nice drapey yarn.

BTW, this is columbia fiber that was a gift from steve (hi steve!!). he bought debbie and i a little fiber last year . . . i dyed some recently and knew right away this was slated to be sock yarn.
i mean, i can just picture this knit up into a torrid little lace stocking, can’t you?

i can always dye some more for the lace yarn—i mean, it’s not like i don’t have enough.

so that’s all i have today for a post i’m really idgety to get away from the computer.

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