September 11

First of all, a moment to remember the victims of 9/11.



I have sort of an FO. On Thursday, I spent the day volunteering for the Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk. (Please consider donating to the Susan G. Kommen Breast Cancer Foundation).

I worked on the Donations Quality Control. There was a long period of time between when they finished training us on our task and when the first walkers arrived to turn in donations. Luckily, I was prepared! I decided to knit all (or almost all) of the socks in the Socks, Socks, Socks book. So, I keep a pair of socks in the car at all times. Then, when I'm stuck somewhere, I have a project going and it's a very small project that I can just throw in my purse. I got about halfway through the toe at the Walk, so I decided to finish it Thursday night so I could cast on and be ready to start the second sock next time I need my "car knitting."




Here's a close up of the heel. It's the first time I've put a pattern on a heel. I like how it looks, but I don't like how it fits - it's not very close-fitting.



I took these pictures out on the porch to get some natural light, and my furry shadows followed me out there. Fiona was supervising:



and Finbar was sniffing the air, perhaps trying to find a squirrel or rabbit in the yard. Of course, he was also keeping an eye on me:



Yes, the floor of the porch looks awful. It's been painted gray since I moved in and I've always wanted to paint it something a little nicer. Last summer I picked out a lovely dark blue floor paint and painted the whole porch. I think it wasn't clean enough when I painted though, because as you can see, the blue started wearing off in the traffic path, almost immediately. It was an incredibly hot weekend when I did the painting, so I feel like all that work was for nothing. All well. Most of the porch is covered in stuff anyway, since when we moved into a smaller office, a lot of the stuff from the old office was "temporarily" stored on my porch - almost a year later, and half of it is still there.

After I finished up the sock, I decided to make this watch. I bought this kit when I went to Crafts Direct in St. Cloud a few weeks ago:



Here's a closeup of the bead pattern:



I made a blue beaded watch last year, but I think now that I have this purple one, I'll probably wear that a lot more.

While I had the beads out, I decided to try my hand at making beaded stitch markers. It was really easy and really fun! A great way to use up left over beads. I was going to take snaps for y'all, but I decided they'd be a great gift for my Secret Pal, so they'll remain cloaked in mystery for now.